Some bad ideas never go away. In the 2020 presidential election, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) pushed for sweeping healthcare system changes based on a bill he called Medicare for All. Fortunately, Senator Sanders was not elected president, but his bad idea has not died; he recently reintroduced the bill in a new version called The Medicare for All Act of 2023. This legislation is co-sponsored by 14 Democrats in the Senate and 110 in the House of Representatives. Keep in mind, none of these elected officials will be subject to this change in healthcare since they have their own congressional healthcare that you and I are not eligible to receive.
The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, known as FEHBP, serves about nine million federal workers, retirees, and their families, including the President, the Vice President, the White House staff, cabinet secretaries, and federal judges. This makes them the only Americans with a major healthcare program based on consumer choice within a system of market competition. While far from being a perfect system, FEHBP has many beneficial features absent from most existing private sector insurance plans.
But these politicians don’t want you to enjoy the same benefits they do; they want you to be subject to a socialized medicine system like the one our northern neighbors in Canada are enduring. What’s that system like?
Here’s a taste of what Canadian healthcare is like:
Grace-Marie Turner, writing for Galen.org, says Canadian Health Minister Adrian Dix announced recently that eligible breast and prostate cancer patients will be sent to one of two clinics in Bellingham, Washington, for radiation treatments starting May 29th. That’s Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A! In other words, the Canadian healthcare system hasn’t the capacity to treat its own residents!
The unprecedented move to send thousands of British Columbia patients to the U.S. over the next two years is an attempt to address the backlog in B.C., which has one of the longest waits for radiation treatment in Canada. While breast cancer and prostate cancer patients will receive quicker radiation treatment in the U.S., this is undoubtedly an indictment of B.C.’s flagging healthcare system. Yet Senator Sanders and his co-sponsors want to implement a similar system in the U.S., but exempt themselves from this change. Turner asks this question: “Where would American patients go for treatment if Sanders’ Medicare for All regime were implemented here?”
Even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is skeptical. They say, “Establishing such a system would be a “major undertaking” that would be “complicated, challenging, and potentially disruptive,” and the “changes could significantly affect the overall U.S. economy.” CBO says that “Setting payment rates equal to Medicare [fee-for-service] rates under a single-payer system would reduce the average payment rates most providers receive—often substantially.”
This would likely “reduce the amount of care supplied and could also reduce the quality of care.” The number of hospitals and other health care facilities might also decline as a result of closures, and there might be less investment in new and existing facilities. According to CBO, the low payment rates in a single-payer system “could lead to a shortage of providers, longer wait times, and changes in the quality of care, especially if patient demand increased substantially.” (We already have a nurse and doctor shortage in America.)
Turner says she catalogued many of the reasons why Medicare for All is a terrible idea for America in her 29- page testimony before Sen. Sanders’ Budget Committee hearing last year. But apparently, Senator Sanders wasn’t listening. She says, “We can learn a lot about what not to do from Canada’s Fraser Institute which catalogues the long waits for care across the country. Why is this idea even still on the table here, especially after our Covid fiasco? “
Good question, Senator Sanders. Why is it still on the table?
