False Promises of Medicare for All
There has been a lot of talk recently on the campaign trail about ‘Medicare for All’ or ‘Single Payer Healthcare’. It promises to no only cut costs, but it will provide unlimited and no cost health coverage to everyone. Plus, you can see any doctor or provider you want. The problem is, these are the false promises of Medicare for All and single payer healthcare.
As we wrote in another recent article about a single payer system being proposed in NY , the proponents are selling the idea without consideration of the facts and consequences of such a proposal. Let’s, for the moment, put aside the enormous cost of such a proposal to focus on one underlying fact that nobody promoting Medicare for All is addressing nor can they account for – Medical Providers and Hospitals will not accept the steep decreases in compensation needed to make the proposal work.
In an excellent article by Sally Pipes (President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute) in a Forbes article, she points out the large and increasing wait times to receive approved care in Britain’s version of Medicare for All called the National Health Service (NHS). This delay is caused by a large gap in providers available to treat patients as they are either retiring early or not going into the profession in the first place because of low wages and long hours. In fact, how many healthcare providers do you know who would be willing to work for less money, and have to put in more hours than they do now? Chances are few or none.
Before it is too late, I invite you to read the article above as it is short and clearly outlines many of the problems with Medicare for All that are just not being discussed. While healthcare is a complex issue, common sense tells you the government is not the one who will fix it. They will only make it much, much worse.