Sally Pipes: "Why the DSA’s Medicare-for-All Dream Threatens Us with a Real-Life Nightmare"

The following is an excerpt from an article by Sally Pipes, Founder and Chair of the Benjamin Rush Institute, published in the New York Post and the California Post. Click here to read the full article in your browser.

Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan is building his US Senate campaign on Medicare for All, promising health care coverage for all Americans “cradle-to-grave.”

In Minnesota, Democratic Senate nominee Peggy Flanagan has likewise made Medicare for All a central plank of her progressive platform.

In New York, more than 100 state lawmakers have co-sponsored legislation to establish a statewide single-payer system.

Single-payer health care is back on the political agenda, pushed by Democratic Socialists and their leftist allies as the answer to Americans’ frustrations with private medical insurers.

But while excoriating insurance companies may be good politics, forcing everyone into a government insurance monopoly would be disastrous policy.

Employers can move their workers to a different insurer; those who buy their own coverage can compare competing plans and switch during open enrollment.

Even Medicare beneficiaries — whose coverage is financed by the federal government — still enjoy real choices.

They can enroll in traditional Medicare or choose among competing Medicare Advantage plans run by private insurers, and many can also shop among competing Part D prescription-drug plans.

Choice and competition matter, and even one of America’s largest government health programs recognizes that.

Medicare for All would eliminate all those choices by effectively outlawing private insurance.

Competing insurers would no longer negotiate payments and prices with providers — leaving Washington to become the nation’s single payer for health care.

Click here to read the full article in your browser.