So, hey, what about hospitals in the Democrats Single Payer, er, Medicare for All scheme?
This Is The Part Of ‘Medicare For All’ That You Never Hear About
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and his allies talk a lot about how “Medicare for All†would take back money from insurers and drug companies, and use those savings to help make sure every American has generous health insurance. That is accurate.
But Sanders and his allies rarely mention that Medicare for All would also restrict the flow of money into the rest of the health care industry, including the parts that aren’t as easy to demonize in speeches.
At the top of that list are hospitals, which alone account for roughly one-third of the nation’s health care spending. No other sector, not even pharmaceuticals, rivals it. Under the Medicare for All proposals from Sanders as well as some other potential reforms getting attention these days, the federal government would limit payments to hospitals, quite possibly reducing their incomes significantly.
The case for squeezing hospitals is strong, given the available research on what they charge and why. Even some experts historically wary of government regulation are warming to the concept.
But actually crafting a policy that would cut hospital payments enough to free up big sums of money without adverse effects wouldn’t be easy and getting such a policy through Congress could be even tougher. The hospital industry is already pushing back and, as this debate moves forward, it’s only going to push harder.
There’s no doubt that hospitals probably get too much money, that they charge too much for the service they provide, especially when compared to hospitals around the world. And, I’m sure, many can make the argument that the costs are what they should be (an aspirin costing $30? No.) But, do we want to squeeze them so much that they cannot provide proper care?
The promise of simplicity is one reason price regulations are getting another look. If hospitals could send bills just to one place, instead of dozens, and if they could have just one list of prices, they wouldn’t have to maintain such complex electronic billing systems and hire so many people to run them.
More important, though, giving government the power to set prices would mean giving government the power to set those prices a lot lower than they are today.
So, um, yeah, putting the Central Government pretty much fully in charge of hospitals nationwide. If you control the money, you control the institution.
Not every hospital closure is a problem. The worry is that some hospitals might cut back on services like psychiatry that typically lose money but are already insufficient to meet current demand. Reducing hospital income crudely could make these sorts of problems worse, causing even longer waits for services ― or simply making it harder to deliver care effectively. (snip to end)
Adopting Medicare for All, Medicare for America, and other schemes that would regulate hospitals would require trade-offs of one sort or another. But so would doing nothing.
You could see hospitals closing, as well as reduced care and long wait lines. Surprise? Really, though, the Medicare for All crowd doesn’t care about costs or service, they just want the government in control of everything.
