Forget “Medicare for All” … It Will Be VA for All

More and more Democrats are signing on for socialist Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan.

Single-payer: It’s coming. It has to come, because in the absence of a free market, there’s no other option.

Remember the post office monopoly? Before we had texting, email and Internet, the mail was very important. The post office was infamous for its unresponsiveness and inhumane, bungling bureaucracy. Gradually the market for communication privatized with the evolution of FedEx and UPS, not to mention the Internet. How will medical care get saved?

And then there’s the V.A. I heard someone say that if you think the federal government will treat ordinary citizens better than veterans, you’re out of your mind. And you are. The only people who will be treated well under a single-payer, totally federalized system of health care will be the politically connected. The politically powerful and the friends of the powerful. Think Jimmy Carter and John McCain. With their cancer, they were immediately exposed to the leading edge, best treatment available. The rich generally support and give money to the powerful, and they will be fine too, under a federalized system. But what about everyone else?

Americans were the last industrialized people to sign on for universal health care. It hasn’t happened yet. Not even all Democrats have signed on for the Medicare for All bill, but more have than ever before. It will likely be part of their platform in 2020 and beyond. As I said, in the absence of a free market, what else is there but command-and-control government?

Americans have not thought this out. They know enough to say, “Sure, universal coverage for all is a good idea. All other civilized nations have it. Why not us?” They don’t stop to think about what they’re killing. They’re killing the ability of doctors to work for themselves and their patients. Doctors and hospitals will only be working for the government, just like the mail system in the days of the post office monopoly. Only the stakes are literal life-and-death, not just the mail. When you go to the doctor and you don’t like your treatment, it’s not between you and the doctor. It’s between you and your U.S. Senator or Congressman.

“I’d rather doctors and hospitals work for the federal government than insurance companies,” people say. Really? Insurance companies can go out of business. Government does not, and the bureaucrats who inhabit it know it cannot. Is that really preferable to a market? I’m not defending the hyper-regulated “market” that passes for health care and health insurance today, especially post-Obamacare. But really, America?

It’s so easy to fall for the virtue signaling of leftist socialist Democrats who run pretty much our entire government and educational system, not to mention the media. “Universal coverage. Medicare for all!” Why, yes, fellow virtue-signaler, of course I support that. Who wouldn’t support that? Some kind of racist hater?

What could possibly be wrong with that? I wonder if anyone has taken the time to consider that not only is Medicare bankrupt and unsustainable, but it only sustains itself with the existence of a partial semi-free market sector to keep medicine profitable, at least pre-Obamacare. If we wipe out profit incentives and the motivation for excellence in the entire field, then what next? Even public schools have a little competition with private schools, for the minority of parents who can afford it. It’s unlikely we’ll see the same once there’s Medicare for all. Government will be the first, last and only option. You’d better know someone! Or you’ll die.

Don’t think Medicare for all. Think VA for all. Only it’s a lot worse than that, because most of us are not veterans, and most of us are not politically connected. Medicare for all will be hell on earth, and by the time it gets here, it won’t be easy to turn it back. We should reverse course now, and move toward a free market in medicine, while it’s still less difficult to do so. We’ve got to immunize ourselves against this toxic idea.

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