Leftists claim that single-payer health care would grant every American affordable access to quality health care, but those who are not deceived by such Panglossian claims recognize that single-payer leads to nothing but uncontrollable costs, rationing, shortages, limited resources, and unacceptable wait times. Sally Pipes debunks these unworkable systems in "The False Promise of Single-Payer Health Care."
In this pamphlet that can be read in about an hour, Pipes refutes charges that the U.S. health care system is worse than those of Canada and the U.K., explaining how we measure our statistics differently, that Canadians go abroad for care when they need critical procedures, and that the British and Canadian systems fail in key areas—they end up spreading misery equally instead of providing quality care. The author rightly asserts that "whenever governments try to overrule the laws of supply and demand, the results are rationing, shortages, and runaway costs."
Pipes also describes the salient problems with Medicare and Medicaid, and notes that the cost of an American single-payer system would be far more than the Left supposes since their proposed plan is much more generous than those of European countries—she cites the gross underestimation of Medicare's 1990 cost in 1964 as a past example. Single-payer would also stifle the innovation that American medicine relies on to develop disease cures that lead to long-term health-care cost reduction.
Those cogizant of the true costs of single-payer as the Left proposes it know that the system would simply be unaffordable in America. Deep-blue Vermont jettisoned its single-payer plan when it became clear that it would double the state's budget. Bluish-purple Colorado also came to the same clear conclusion and sensibly voted down its proposed single-payer referendum in November 2016 by a 4-to-1 mega-landslide when residents realized that the plan would double its state budget as well.
Leftists try to sell single-payer with the absurd claim that "everyone could have gold-plated health-care if the rich would pay just a little bit more," but in Europe, everyone, not just the rich, is taxed at bone-crushing rates to pay for a welfare state that is, to put it extraordinarily mildly, not worth the reduced take-home pay that it exacts. Pipes illustrates how single-payer in no way, shape, or form would "save money" (if Americans think health care is expensive now, they should just wait until it is "free"). Americans are canny enough to realize that a European-style welfare state thunderously fails a cost-benefit analysis.
In this relatively short pamphlet, Pipes offers serious, well-developed arguments based in logic, experience, and, most vitally, arithmetic that refute the Left's emotive variants of "you're just being mean," and "The False Promise of Single-Payer Health Care" is inoculation against the snake-oil nostrums sure to be peddled by the Left in advance of the 2020 election.
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False Promise
This book is a “false promise”. This could have been done as a 1-2 page pdf. The booklet fits in the palm of your hand, the font is HUGE and booklet is 52 pages long. Very disappointed.
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