The American left, as we’ve had occasion to remark in these pages before, suffers from a paucity of new ideas. Or maybe it’s truer to say it suffers from a surfeit of old ones. In any case, one old idea making the rounds among Democrats these days goes by the moniker “Medicare for All.” The proposal, commonly associated with Sen. Bernie Sanders, involves the abolition of private-sector health insurance in favor of a single-payer system for all Americans like the one the federal government currently provides for Americans 65 and older. It is, in essence, a bigger, more coercive Obamacare.
Nonetheless a sizable number of the new Democratic majority in the House support the idea, as well as about a third of the Democratic caucus in the Senate.
There are at least two major problems with it. The first and most important is that it’s utterly implausible. One study by the libertarian Mercatus Center at George Mason University estimated that expanding Medicare to the whole taxpaying population would cost an additional $32.6 trillion over 10 years. That is—how to put it?—not something the U.S. government, or any government, can afford. Progressives dispute the number but not convincingly.
The other problem with Medicare for All is rather more amusing. One of the Democratic party’s most powerful and reliable constituencies—public-sector unions—is having second thoughts about it. In Albany, New York, state lawmakers are considering a bill that would in essence make the state the sole provider of health insurance to all New York residents—a kind of state-level Medicare for All. But it has suddenly dawned on unions representing government workers that if such a thing were put in place, they would no longer have the power to negotiate generous insurance plans from private-sector providers.
Of course the bill’s supporters claim that under the New York Health Care Act, as it’s called, health insurance benefits would be even more generous than they already are. But union officials are smart enough to know that the government can offer great benefits today and take them away tomorrow. And with no more private-sector providers for union negotiators to shake down and threaten—sorry, negotiate with—the state could unilaterally take away those benefits the next time there’s a budget crunch. No more free massage therapy sessions for state employees, basically.
If there’s one thing The Scrapbook loves, it’s watching Democrats brawl with each other when the consequences of their dumb ideas become reality. Pass the popcorn.
