The False Promise of Single-Payer Health Care

By Sally C. Pipes

A government takeover of the US health care system has never looked more plausible. Support for the idea is at an all-time high. Two-thirds of Democratic voters favor “single-payer” health care; even one in four Republicans is on board.

In this Broadside, Sally C. Pipes makes the case against single-payer by offering evidence of its devastating effects on patients in Canada, the United Kingdom, and even the United States. Long wait times, substandard care, lack of access to innovative treatments, huge public outlays, and spiraling costs are endemic to single-payer.

Those are hardly outcomes we should consider foisting upon the American health care system.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Release date: Mar 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781641770040

Book preview

ENCOUNTER BROADSIDES

Inaugurated in the fall of 2009, Encounter Broadsides are a series of timely pamphlets and e-books from Encounter Books. Uniting an 1 8 th century sense of public urgency and rhetorical wit (think The Federalist Papers, Common Sense) with 21st century technology and channels of distribution, Encounter Broadsides offer indispensable ammunition for intelligent debate on the critical issues of our time. Written with passion by some of our most authoritative authors, Encounter Broadsides make the case for ordered liberty and the institutions of democratic capitalism at a time when they are under siege from the resurgence of collectivist sentiment. Read them in a sitting and come away knowing the best we can hope for and the worst we must fear.

Table of Contents

Cover

What Is Single-Payer?

Part I: Single-Payer Nightmares in Canada and the United Kingdom

Oh, Canada

Bed Blockers

Poor Outcomes

High Costs

Suing for Private Insurance

Trouble in the United Kingdom

Rationing

Shortages of Everything

Going Private

Around the World – and at Home

Part II: Single-Payer Healthcare in the United States

Medicare and Its Discontents

Medicaid Is Worse Than Nothing

The VA’s Dereliction of Duty

Laboratories of Socialized Medicine

Part III: Single-Payer Plans Under Consideration

Unlike Anything in the World

Incalculable Costs

Other Roads to Single-Payer

Conclusion

Copyright

AGOVERNMENT TAKEOVER of the US health care system has never looked more plausible.

Support for the idea is at an all-time high, according to Gallup. Two-thirds of Democratic voters favor it; even one in four Republicans is on board. Medicare for All bills have been introduced in the House and Senate, with record numbers of cosponsors.

Senator Bernie Sanders has emerged as one of the dominant forces on the political left, thanks in part to his call for single-payer health care. That call was the linchpin for his 2016 presidential campaign. The passion his supporters exhibited for single-payer has prompted many leading Democrats around the country to embrace the idea.

WHAT IS SINGLE-PAYER?

Under single-payer, a single entity pays for health care services. The only entity with the heft to shoulder that responsibility is the government.

If single-payer were to take hold in the United States, private insurance coverage would be outlawed. About 160 million people who get health benefits through work—roughly half the population—and more than twenty million people who purchase insurance on their own