Single-Payer

“If you think healthcare is expensive now, just wait until it’s free.” — P.J. O’Rourke

Most Democrat candidates for president have endorsed “Medicare for All” ... or a nice way of saying socialized medicine. Candidates like Bernie Sanders have had some success in selling this enticing concept to his adoring audiences because:

- In it’s extreme form, it will eliminate monthly premium payments, possibly co-pays, annual limits, and the need for supplemental private insurance. Obviously, this furthest left version may not be what is proposed by all the Democrat candidates ... for, as we know, we are the frogs in the pot of water as it is being slowly heated up on the Socialist gas burner.

- Or course, Obamacare will disappear like the Cheshire Cat, but it’s smile ... no preexisting conditions exclusions and children covered until age 26 ... may remain.

- Drugs will be free or priced low like they are in Europe and  Canada.

However, even in its less-than-extreme version, Medicare for All will mean that retirees will be faced with severely deteriorating medical treatments ... long wait times for appointments, more impersonal medical visits, triage based on age to determine whether treatments will be even offered for many serious illnesses (better known as death panels) ... and likely severe doctor shortages. In other words, our healthcare experience will be very much like what is received today by indigents in hospital emergency rooms.

Of course, the bad news is, in its extreme form, Medicare for All will eliminate the private healthcare insurance industry, worth close to half a trillion dollars ... and the concomitant hit to many citizens’ retirement accounts. This would be essentially an enormous capital confiscation on the part of the federal government. The worse news will be that this public program will cost taxpayers $30 trillion over 10 years. Will taxes then have to go up immensely to pay for this largess? You betcha Red Ryder!

When liberals push socialized medicine they often laud England’s National Health Service. What they neglect to say is that over 11% of Brits have private health insurance or medical concierge services ... so they can avoid  the horrors of socialized medicine. And, of course Mick Jagger chose to get his heart surgery in the United States rather than some moldy hospital in Londonstan.

But, most depressing of all, tens of millions of people, who never paid a nickle into Medicare, will be getting exactly the same diminished medical care as we saps who have been paying mucho dinero into this program ... and supplements ... for many decades. Seems fair to me ...