Serious People

"Medicare for All" was already supposed to cost a nearly unfathomable amount of money. What if we were to pledge to add to it the costs of anyone from anywhere in the world who shows up here needing health care, regardless of whether or not they have any sort of visa or legal right to enter the country?


As I've said in this space before, I'd love to hear the plan to save the Medicare we have before they start telling me that they're going to institute Medicare for All. That was when I assumed that "all" meant "all Americans," rather than "∀." It's a logical principle easy to script: (∀x)Fx->Gx. That is, 'for all x, if x is a person who needs healthcare, x gets it for free.'

People ask, "But how will you pay for it?" They answer, "We'll print the money we need." Well, yes, you can print money. Can you also print the doctors you'll need? This way lies inflation, sure, but the bigger problem will be scarcity of medical resources -- just as our largest population of American citizens, the Boomers, reach the age at which their need for medical resources will be greatest.

It's madness. Every single one of them put their hands up for it.

5 comments:

Christopher B said...

'MedicARE for All' does not work with 'Eliminate private health Insurance'. The combination means MedicAID for everyone, including those currently on Medicare, unless you're connected or can otherwise buy yourself out if the system.

E Hines said...

"But how will you pay for it?" They answer, "We'll print the money we need." Well, yes, you can print money. Can you also print the doctors you'll need?

There's more than money involved here. Medicare for All won't need more doctors; it'll need doctors. The "for All" programs on offer all maintain the current Medicare's cap on reimbursements of doctors (and hospitals). There already are fewer and fewer doctors who will accept Medicare at all. And as Delaney pointed out last night, absent any payment alternative other than Medicare, hospitals would have to close. Doctors will have to close their practices, too.

Eric Hines

David Foster said...

"Can you also print the doctors you'll need? "

A serious leftist or liberal...say, someone of the FDR stamp...would have proposed as part of his healthcare plan a large-scale plan for training new doctors and nurses, and possibly also expanding the scope of work that non-physicians (nurses and nurse practitioners) are allowed to do. Have any of the democrats even mentioned any such addressing of the Supply issue?

I'm reminded on Obama's crack about how solving under-infalation of tires would do more for oil supply than would expanded drilling...ridiculous of course, but did he even propose a program to educate people about the benefits of proper inflation and maybe even encourage service stations to make it a little less difficult to actually do? No, of course he did not.

Grim said...

I suspect at least some of them have thought it through as far as, "Well, we'll import doctors via even more immigration!" That this would denude the Third World of doctors -- thus leading to mass human suffering -- is secondary to the goal of just flooding America with strangers to her history and Constitution.

ymarsakar said...

How will we pay for it? How about starting to tax Hollywood and Congress... oh, American slaves can't do that? Well... tough.