Tuesday, June 19, 2012
No Single Payer in Our Time
“Hope springs eternal” would make a good motto for the
advocates of single payer (a.k.a. national health insurance). A few days ago, I got a large, impressive
looking envelope in the mail from Public Citizen, a Washington D.C. U.S.
The June 16 issue of The Boston Globe also had a letter or
two urging single payer as the solution to our health care issues.
Single payer may be a good idea and the people who so
persistently urge its adoption are undoubtedly intelligent, sincere, and
well-meaning, but I have news for them.
It isn’t going to happen.
The reason is this: Most
of the politically active people in this country have health insurance and are
satisfied with their coverage. Given
that we already spend too much for health care (if costs are too high, that
means that expenditures are, too.) there is no conceivable program of national
health insurance that would leave these people better off. Some of them would be worse off, and, given
the legendary American distrust of government, the rest are likely to fear that
they might be, too.
No politician skillful enough to earn election to national
office would be likely to vote for anything having such a result. An example has been provided by the
Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare).
It contains reform measures much less drastic than single payer and
despite a number of provisions that have been well received, has proved to be
less popular than the President might have hoped for.
For over forty years now I have been predicting that we
would not have national health insurance in the U.S.
