America keeps on getting fatter. Far from helping, Elizabeth Warren’s new plan for Medicare for All could make our obesity crisis worse.
Current trends are already quite concerning, according to recently-released CDC data. The new numbers say 40% of American adults are obese, and 18% of children are too — staggering figures, to say the least.
Here’s how Axios reported on the data (emphasis mine):
This is common sense: The worse your health, the higher your healthcare costs. However, it also brings us to one of the potential consequences of the proposed switch to socialized health insurance, such as Elizabeth Warren’s $52 trillion “Medicare for All” plan.
Common criticisms of Medicare for All include the astronomical price tag that would require at least doubling federal taxes — including on the middle class, despite Warren’s denial, as my colleague Kaylee McGhee points out — as well as socialized healthcare’s harmful affect on American innovation and the potential creation of healthcare shortages and waitlists.
However, there’s one potential unintended consequence this plan could have: It might make America’s obesity problem worse. Here’s how:
Right now in our current garbled, crony healthcare system, at least most Americans face at least some of their own healthcare costs. This means that if you make unhealthy choices, that lead to obesity and diabetes, for instance, the cost of your health insurance and related expenses will rise. At least some of the increased costs you are imposing on society will be reflected in your personal bill.
Economics tells us that people respond to incentives, and the current system provides at least a modest incentive toward healthy decision-making. While there’s tons of fog here — people don’t necessarily know what’s good for them, they don’t know what healthcare costs, and the health effects of behavior are long-term — this incentive probably exerts a slight drag on the rate of our national waistline expansion.
When healthcare is “free” under a socialized program (aka we all pay for it collectively in taxes), individuals bear no direct increased costs for unhealthy behavior, such as eating habits that lead to obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Thus we’ve removed one financial disincentive to unhealthy behavior.
Critics might counter that many countries with systems similar to Medicare for All don’t have the same obesity problems as the United States, and in this, they’re right. But it’s an apples to oranges comparison: These countries don’t have the same underlying culture, unhealthy habits, and norms. The real issue at hand is how Medicare for All would change the incentives Americans face in their health decisions, and the reality that it would make us fatter seems inescapable.
The famed free-market economist Thomas Sowell explains this principle in his book Basic Economics:
Elizabeth Warren’s plan for Medicare for All could lead to greater self-indulgence, indeed. That’s the last thing Americans can afford.
