Commentary: Why Conservatives Should Support Medicare for All | Columnists

The system, while benefiting a few lucky Americans, doesn’t work for most of us.

You would think that ensuring that every American not only has “access” to health care, but to the care they can actually afford, would be a nonpartisan and bipartisan endeavor.

Not for most politicians in Washington: Health lobbyists spend more than $600 million of our health care dollars every year to make sure industry gets what it wants rather than making sure that the rest of us can get affordable care.

Conservatives, seemingly indifferent to the success and popularity of publicly funded Social Security and Medicare, seem to be particularly adept at labeling affordable health care for all as an infamous anti-American plot. that would destroy America (“socialism!”, “government control.!”) rather than something that would allow us to keep pace with other advanced nations of the world.

So let’s look at seven reasons why conservatives in both parties should be keen to support Medicare for All, a popular single-payer health insurance system funded by public contributions, where health care would still be provided by America’s excellent private providers. .

The AMF is much cheaper to manage, consuming only 2 to 3% of health expenditures instead of the 15 to 20% necessary to manage some private health insurers. Switching to MFA will save $600 billion in health care dollars a year in administrative costs alone. That’s a lot of money. Better to spend it on patients than to build more medical bureaucracy.

MFA also saves money when it “bends the health care cost curve” – ​​the holy grail of health economists and conservatives – because as a monopsony it will reduce the costs of goods and services it purchases. We could save $100 billion a year on pharmaceuticals alone. No, the essential creative industries of healthcare will not disappear – they will thrive as they do in every other advanced country with affordable universal coverage.

Everyone contributes, based on their income, not an arbitrary premium, so it’s really affordable. Universal contributions, by the way, are an idea straight out of the conservative Heritage Foundation, based on “personal responsibility” – if you can share its benefits, you should contribute to the system. (It wasn’t until Democrats used it that Republican conservatives began to despise those terms.)

Based on the popularity of other similar government-funded programs, there should be less political interference in MFA than in our current system, where politicians frequently put their finger on the balance of access to Health care. Anyone familiar with the cries of “Keep the government out of my Social Security and Medicare” understands why interfering with these programs is still considered the “third rail” of American politics.

There is more competition under the MFA because the artificial networks of providers that benefit the health insurance industry at the expense of patients are eliminated. All providers will compete for all patients based not on price (which will continue to be negotiated between insurer and providers) but on service.

MFA is great for businesses. This relieves employers of the burden of health care costs. Warren Buffett called our current healthcare system the tapeworm of American competitiveness. Financing health care with public funds will improve American competitiveness, globally and locally. It will also be easier to start a business. Or, since health insurance is no longer linked to one’s job, for employees to change jobs

Public financing of health care will help many areas, urban and rural, where access to health care is sorely lacking. These areas do not suffer from a lack of patients – they have too many patients who cannot afford medical care and who forgo care or receive care for which the providers are not paid. So the hospitals go bankrupt, or the doctors cannot be found. Don’t believe those who say MFA will harm these areas. When everyone has insurance they can afford, the reality is quite the opposite.

Finally, what about the health insurance industry? As an extremely expensive and utterly unnecessary middleman, its days are numbered. Economists call its eventual demise “creative destruction.” (The MFA is setting aside billions of dollars saved in health care to ensure industrial workers who lose their jobs have an economic “soft landing”).

Liberal or conservative, these are health care values ​​we should all share.

Most Americans support the MFA.

Check with your candidate whether they agree or not.

Jay D. Brock, MD, is a retired physician living in Fredericksburg.