Medicare for All: Pushback against Warren

In my last post about Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren's Medicare for All plan (better, trial balloon) I wrote that Warren assumes healthcare providers will be reimbursed only 110% of Medicare rates. She says nothing about resulting healthcare facilities closing or healthcare job losses.

Healthcare providers, especially hospitals and doctors, whose revenues Warren wants to slash, have since responded as reported here. Medicare pays providers much less than private insurance does. The difference is especially large at hospitals, where an analysis by Rand Health Care found that private insurers pay more than twice as much on average for similar care. Medicare's (and Medicaid's) low payment rates have forced higher payments onto private insurers for decades.

Warren talks as if slashing revenues would only be superficial, like the 2 million private insurance administrative job losses she flippantly admitted. In their imaginative rhetoric, politicians write a law, snap their fingers, and reality magically changes as they intend and no way else. The providers know better. Lower revenues to providers would not merely reduce the pay of "the rich" and pare "unnecessary" work like Warren (and Sanders) want voters to believe. Lower revenues would affect middle and lower income jobs and how much providers can afford for supplies, equipment, real estate, innovation, etc. Some healthcare facilities would be forced to close.

The article quotes demagogue Bernie Sanders: "People don't like their private insurance companies. They like their doctors and hospitals. We will substantially lower the cost of health care in this country because we will stop the greed of the insurance companies and the drug companies."

Contra Sanders, millions of people, even if not fond of insurance companies, much appreciate and demand the healthcare that the insurers pay for. Nevertheless and anti-freedom, both Warren and Sanders want to eliminate such insurance for 160 million or so people! Also note that Sanders' second sentence fits his reality defying assumption that government can magically change reality as he intends and no way else.

The final paragraph quotes Dr. Stephen Klasko: "Warren saying everyone has to take a hit is probably the right thing." Huh? Warren says that her plan would not take one cent from the middle class.