On Sunday night, weeks after we had pointed it out, someone finally thought to ask Bernie Sanders about his home state’s experience adopting a single-payer healthcare system.
Vermont had planned to use Obamacare and the millions in federal grants that accompanied it as a jumping-off point for establishing its own universal state-run health insurance system. The plan had to be abandoned, however, when lawmakers and the state’s Democratic governor were finally informed it would require a doubling of the state’s budget.
When Andrea Mitchell asked the question, Sanders gave just the sort of weak answer you’d expect.
“Let me just say that you might want to ask the governor of the state of Vermont why he could not do it,” Sanders said. “I’m not the governor. I’m the senator from the state of Vermont.”
Of course, this is a rather damning commentary on the policy. Vermont’s governor, unlike its senator, has to worry about budgets balancing and taxpayer rebellions and the like. If the math for single-payer cannot work in a small and idyllic state where political will is abundant and major social pathologies relatively scarce, how could it ever work nationwide as Sanders wants it to? After all, the trebling of the Medicare program’s client base hardly seems like an appropriate fix for its massive and worsening financial problems.
This all serves to illustrate the pie-in-the-sky nature of Sanders’ agenda. In addition to a $14 trillion healthcare plan, Sanders wants free college for all. He wants to add significantly to the subsidies for seniors’ prescription drugs. He wants to expand subsidies for solar and wind energy while ending all fossil fuel leases on federal lands. He wants to raise the minimum wage to $15. He wants to subsidize small farmers still further.
The problem is, it will be impossible for a President Sanders to keep such promises without running out of other people’s money to spend and promise. As his questioners pointed out on Sunday, Sanders’ agenda includes substantial tax increases on the middle class. Taken together, his plans that increase taxes by nearly $20 trillion over a decade.
Accordingly, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has wisely worked to position herself to Sanders’ right. She has tried to position herself in a more practical slot. Instead of free college, she wants to give students a debt-free college experience. Instead of single-payer, she wants to impose price controls on drugs and throw some more money at the other problems Obamacare is currently causing insurance customers.
The problem is that these proposals do not fix the deep problems in the systems they plague. They are ultimately not more practical than Sanders’, when one considers the costs they would shift to taxpayers, consumers, and businesses that provide millions with their livelihoods.
The federal government is already spending beyond its means. Its trust funds for supporting the sick and elderly are rapidly depleting as the baby boom generation retires and a historically unusual share of the young remain outside the labor force, contributing nothing. Thus means that neither Clinton nor Sanders can fulfill their campaign promises without imposing major tax increases on the middle class. The math is very clear: The wealthy simply don’t make enough money to bear the burden alone.
Voters should beware of candidates who promise them the moon. They should be even more wary of candidates who promise to throw more money into the fire without the painstaking and at times painful reforms that will make.
