OPINION - EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL: The American health-care system is complicated but one thing is simple ... .

American health care is complicated, but …

As Democratic presidential candidates debate how to best socialize medicine--and are sure to debate it this week on television--it can be difficult to wrap one's head around some of the finer details. As President Trump famously said, "Nobody knew health care could be so complicated!" But in spite of all the complexity, there is one thing most can agree to, at least when it comes to the idea of Medicare For All:

Doctors will be paid less.

Check the reimbursement rates for doctors taking private insurance versus those with a high number of Medicare and Medicaid patients. Government-run health insurance is great for people who need it. But it doesn't pay doctors as well as private insurance. This is something you don't hear discussed as often when Sen. Bernie Sanders & Co. are on stage promoting the idea to gut the private market.

Marc Siegel, a medical professor, wrote on this topic in National Review. Here's more from his article:

"In the U.S. currently, with less than 40 percent of the health-care system in public hands, nearly a third of doctors won't see new Medicaid patients, and Medicare patients frequently have difficulty finding a new primary-care doctor. Public health insurance is more cumbersome and difficult for both doctors and hospitals, and it pays us much less. Most of us try to limit how many Medicare and Medicaid patients we see."

In a country with doctor and nurse shortages already, suddenly paying them less money isn't going to lead to lots of eager medical students. And remember, for all the people Obamacare put into the health-care system, it didn't create one new doctor or nurse. Not a one.

So while the overall problem of making sure everyone in the United States has access to affordable care when they need it is complex, the idea that socialized medicine leads to a pay cut for doctors and thus further exacerbates a medical shortage is pretty simple. What good is everyone having health insurance if no doctors will accept it?

Most seem to agree that American health care is too expensive. Studies show other industrialized nations provide the same level of care for lower costs, so Americans aren't getting bigger bangs for their bucks.

Increasing cost transparency (by making drug makers advertise costs), cutting down on fraud and waste, and increasing competition seem like promising starts for lowering the cost of care for Americans. But as for Medicare for All? No thanks. The doc says it doesn't look too good.

Editorial on 07/29/2019

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