More bad ideas

The public’s support for government healthcare is increasing

In a recent poll, fewer than 50% of Americans say they are satisfied with the US healthcare system.  Only 12% believe that the US healthcare system is doing very well.  In addition, “nearly 8 in 10 say they are at least moderately concerned about getting access to quality healthcare when they need it.”  Healthcare access and costs concerns transcend across all ethnic, racial and gender groups. 

Given the American people’s concern about healthcare what do they support according to a poll conducted in late July and early August? “About two-thirds of adults think it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have health coverage, with adults ages 18 to 49 more likely than those over 50 to hold that view.” (emphasis added)

Furthermore, “the percentage of people who believe healthcare coverage is a government responsibility has risen in recent years, ticking up from 57% in 2019 and 62% in 2017.”

And if you don’t think America is on the road to serfdom, “about four and 10 Americans say they support a single payer healthcare system that would require Americans to get their health insurance from a government plan. …58%, say they favor a government health insurance plan that anyone can purchase.”  And it gets even worse.  “There also is broad support for policies that would help Americans pay for the cost of long-term care, including a government administered insurance plan similar to Medicare.”

The chart below reveals how medical care inflation has far outpaced the Consumer Price index for the past four decades. 

Although Bernie Sanders did not become president his proposal for a single payer system is gaining traction in America.  This is not surprising given how the medical care sector has been distorted by Medicare, Medicaid, third-party, employer-based insurance, and the Federal Reserve’s endless money printing.   And too many people look to government to solve a problem the government created.  In other words, everything that could go wrong in medicine has occurred because of counterproductive government policies

There is a solution.  I outline how to lower medical care costs, improve quality, and restore the doctor-patient relationship in my book on creating an individual single-payer medical care system.  Just the opposite of Bernie’s Medicare for All proposal.  Universal coverage would begin for all babies in the womb and continue throughout their lives. 

If Medicare for All or the so-called government option, where individuals could enroll in Medicare no matter their age is enacted, then the American people would be totally dependent on the benevolence of government bureaucrats to provide them with medical care.

My prediction:  If we don’t restore medical freedom soon, the momentum for a government takeover of medicine will occur within the next 20-40 years, if not sooner. 

Bad ideas take time from their introduction to support to enactment.  That’s been the history of the income tax, the Federal Reserve, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. 

As Benjamin Franklin remarked more than two centuries ago, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." 

We deserve liberty and medical security. The individual single payer system I propose is just what the doctor ordered.