WASHINGTON -- Some critics warn
that Obamacare with its thousands of
pages of mandates, rules, and
regulations is sure to force health
care insurers to hike their prices so
high to comply, many customers will
have to flee them.
And then there's something called the
"death spiral" numerous analysts
warn could crash Obamacare.
"If young and healthy people don't
buy insurance, the insurance pool
gets older and sicker," Dr. Michael
Tanner, with the libertarian Cato
Institute. told CBN News. "That
means the younger and healthier
drop out further, premiums rise, and
so on until the whole system
collapses."
Many liberals are already saying that
the problems with Obamacare mean
the country should give up on it and
go to a different system: the single
payer plan.
Some describe that as a total
nationalizing or government takeover
of health care -- with the government
being the single payer for health care
and eliminating private insurance.
"Essentially, single payer is the
government operating as the only
purchaser of health care for
everybody," Ed Haislmaier, senior
research fellow on Health Policy
Studies with the Heritage Foundation,
said.
People would pay for it with taxes
rather than through payments to
private insurance companies.
Many U.S. senators wanted single
payer, but couldn't get enough votes
when Obamacare was hammered out
in messy Capitol Hill negotiations.
"Don't think we didn't have a
tremendous number of people who
wanted a single payer system,"
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-
Nev., said on the PBS program
"Nevada Week in Review" in August.
President Barack Obama has
expressed support for the idea in the
past, like during a 2003 speech before
an AFL-CIO gathering.
"I happen to be a proponent of a
single payer, universal health care
plan," he said then.
Princeton economist Paul Krugman
has recently advocated such a
system.
"The government would be your
insurer, and you'd be covered
automatically by virtue of being an
American," he wrote in The New York
Times in October. "Of course, we
don't have to imagine such a system,
because it already exists. It's called
Medicare, it covers all Americans 65
and older, and it's enormously
popular."
But what Krugman and fellow
advocates don't explain is that
Medicare as it now is is already
doomed to go trillions of dollars in
debt when all those nearing
retirement actually go on the system.
So for the U.S. government to add on
everyone else as well and have a true
single-payer system like European
nations already have, taxes would
have to go up -- way up.
Single payer opponent Paul Roderick
Gregory suggested in a recent Forbes
column that to afford such a system,
America's 15 to 17 percent payroll
taxes would have to more than
double to 37 percent. That's what the
average European pays.
"Americans would pay about 45
percent of their earnings for federal
taxes on income alone," Gregory
wrote.
"We really just can't afford this,"
Tanner said.
The Cato Institute scholar argues that
single-payer systems lead to
rationing health care.
"A single-payer system cannot
provide unlimited health care to
everyone. It would simply bankrupt
the country," he stated. "So it's going
to have to limit care in some ways.
And that's going to be sort of
arbitrary top-down rationing, if you
will."
Tanner, Haislmaier and others point
to the problems some countries
already have with single payer, like
Britain.
"There are about 750,000 people
awaiting admission to National
Health Service hospitals every year,"
Tanner said. "They cancel some
53,000 surgeries every year because
the patients got too sick on the
waiting list for them to go forward."
Heritage's Haislmaier said it's
something the British worry about all
the time.
"When you talk about health care
reform in Britain, the first thing
people ask is, 'How is your proposal
going to reduce the waiting list?'" he
said. "That's the first question they
ask."
"In Canada today, there are about
800,000 people on the waiting list,"
Tanner said.
"And no less than the Canadian
Supreme Court, which is hardly
known as a right-wing organization,
in a 2005 case said some people are
going to die while on the waiting list
up there," he added.
Will the United States end up moving
to single payer system? Analysts
argue it would be a tough sell.
Obamacare is already proving
massively unpopular, they point out.
The president's promises of
Americans keeping their own health
plan and doctor haven't proven true.
Critics say a single payer system
would be even worse.
"The problem with a single payer
system ultimately is that it means
someone else besides you is going to
be making decisions about your
health care," Tanner said.
www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2013/November/Single-Payer-System-Coming-If-Obamacare-Fails-/