| | | >> the mere fact that Medicare is not fully funded in an overpriced health care market does not mean that it's not an effective delivery mechanism not does it mean that a national single payer system is to be dismissed on its basis.
How about we be honest here. Our health care was not overpriced until Medicare wrecked the market place. And in fact, it was several years after the adoption of Medicare that the ever increasing price spiral began, such that in 1990, 25 years after its implementation, it had spent close to $80 Billion more than the $12 Billion that had been budgeted for that period.
Innumerable scholarly studies - I'm sure hundreds -- from that time and later, blamed cost shifting in significant part as the cause of the increase in costs.
Which is to be expected. When you have a well-functioning market, as we did in 1965, and bring in government to price control half of it, it is going to product substantial deleterious consequences, one of which is a price spiral. Because government can never pay its fair share of costs, those costs end up being shifted to the private sector. And instead of a 3 or 4 pct growth rate you end up with double that. Which is what happened from the early days.
Single Payer doesn't work. Were we to adopt it here, the world's innovation -- most of which was happening here, although less today than 10 years ago -- slows dramatically. Because the money is gone and money is what causes innovation.
These are fundamental, immutable economic principles. You can't just wave them away. |
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