“How many people think the problem with U.S. health care is that doctors aren’t forced to answer to enough federal bureaucrats?”

 

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The BernieCare Bust

At Thursday’s debate the senator had no answer for the big question about socialized medicine.

By James Freeman

June 28, 2019 3:04 pm ET

 

Vermont’s socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders during the Democratic presidential primary debate on Thursday night in Miami. PHOTO: SAUL LOEB/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

 

Just hours after Thursday’s Democratic presidential primary debate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California announced this morning that she now opposes the abolition of private health insurance. Perhaps last night she noticed that the country’s most zealous advocate for government health care couldn’t sell it.

 

According to CNN:

 

California Sen. Kamala Harris said Friday that she misinterpreted a question about abolishing private health insurance at Thursday night’s 2020 Democratic debate, despite the fact that she raised her hand when asked if she would eliminate it.

NBC’s Lester Holt asked for the 10 candidates on stage to raise their hands if their health care plans would “abolish their private health insurance in favor of a government-run plan?”

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Harris were the only two candidates who put their hands up, but Harris said Friday she does not support getting rid of all private insurance.

The California Democrat said she misunderstood the question and believed it was about whether she, personally, would give up her private plan in favor of Medicare.

This column doubts that anyone would voluntarily trade congressional medical benefits for a BernieCare card. (The Sanders legislation formally calls it a Universal Medicare card.) But the encouraging news is that at least for the moment Sen. Harris acknowledges a major flaw in the legislation she has co-sponsored to force Americans into government care.

 

Mr. Sanders, standing next to her on last night’s debate stage, may have helped Sen. Harris to recognize the weakness of the plan. Remarkably, even with 24 hours to prepare, Mr. Sanders still didn’t have an answer for the big question about his proposal that had been raised on Wednesday.

 

Former Rep. John Delaney (D., Md.) broke “the socialist reverie” at Wednesday’s debate, according to a Journal editorial, by asking why even successful health plans have to be outlawed under the Sanders plan. “A hundred million Americans say they like their private health insurance,” noted Mr. Delaney.

 

The Maryland Democrat also punctured the fantasy that the government can dictate enormous reductions in the amount paid to medical providers without affecting the quality of patient care. Mr. Delaney said that without the higher rates charged to private plans, no U.S. hospitals could stay in business.

 

One might have expected Mr. Sanders to prepare a rebuttal to this critique. But when asked on Thursday about his plan to end private health insurance, the man who rants for “revolution” suddenly pretended that not much would change for patients. According to the NBC transcript, Mr. Sanders said:

 

“People don’t like their private insurance companies. They like their doctors and hospitals. Under our plan people go to any doctor they want, any hospital they want. We will substantially lower the cost of health care in this country because we’ll stop the greed of the insurance companies”.

Perhaps it’s progress that Mr. Sanders now acknowledges that U.S. patients generally like the care they receive. But how will patients go to any hospital they want if hospitals are not able to stay in business? And how will patients go to any doctor they want if all doctors have just been given a huge financial incentive to stop practicing medicine in the U.S.?

 

Former Social Security and Medicare trustee Charles Blahous wrote last year in the Journal that the Sanders plan would cost taxpayers more than $32 trillion over ten years. Enormous as this expense would be, Mr. Blahous also explained that for the purposes of his estimate, he was accepting the key Sanders claims. Said Mr. Blahous:

 

My projection generously assumes the plan would succeed in lowering prescription-drug costs and that administrative costs would somehow be less than half what they are among private insurers.

 

Most important, it assumes Medicare for All would successfully cut all health-care provider payments down to Medicare’s reimbursement rates, which are more than 40% lower than private insurance rates—and even below providers’ costs of delivering services. Moreover, it assumes that Medicare for All will somehow do all this without disrupting the availability and quality of health care.

 

Of course the history of socialized medicine is that it succeeds in discouraging doctors and creating shortages without achieving the desired cost control. Perhaps this is why the Sanders bill suggests an ambition to ratchet down even further payments made to people who heal us. The draft legislation says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services “shall establish, document, and make publicly available a standardized process for reviewing the relative values of physicians’ services.”

 

How many people think the problem with U.S. health care is that doctors aren’t forced to answer to enough federal bureaucrats?

 

If the Democrats standing on stage with Mr. Sanders are starting to see the flaws in his plan, odds are the Democrats who vote in primaries will too.