Tips: Most Americans don’t want Medicare for All

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks at a May news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington about Medicare for All. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Progressives’ entire rationale for Medicare for All is based on a lie. Or rather two lies.

They argue that Americans are both dissatisfied with the health insurance status quo and that a single-payer system would eliminate that dissatisfaction.

But according to a recent survey, none of these claims are true. Americans are generally satisfied with the existing health insurance system. And single-payer would clearly only exacerbate the problems Americans face under the status quo.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., aptly sums up the progressive view. He recently described the current insurance system as totally broken, dysfunctional and cruel.

So he might be surprised by the results of a new national survey commissioned by my organization, the Pacific Research Institute, which found that 90 percent of Americans are very or somewhat satisfied with their current health insurance plan, an increase by four percentage points compared to last year. survey years. When asked to rate their media coverage, three-quarters of respondents said it was good or very good.

Sanders also argued that his Medicare for All Act is legislation that ordinary Americans want and that would make life much easier for the American people. But in reality, only 16% of respondents say they would definitely support moving to single-payer.

Among the minority of respondents dissatisfied with their current insurance, the main complaint concerns limited access to medical specialists. The second most common complaint concerns limited access to a primary care physician.

Such discontent would increase after a government takeover. Just look at the dysfunction of the Canadian and British single-payer systems.

Sanders and other progressives have long praised the health care system in Canada, where private health insurance for anything deemed medically necessary by the government is illegal. Yet nearly half of Canadians lack reliable access to a family doctor, compared to less than a third of Americans. .About 70% of Americans are confident that they could access urgent care in an emergency. Only 37% of Canadians said the same thing. Overall, twice as many Americans as Canadians report having comfortable access to health care.

In Britain, meanwhile, fewer than three in ten people say they are satisfied with the National Health Service, run by the government for 75 years. The British highlighted the long waiting times. 7.6 million people were on waiting lists for care in England in June and serious staff shortages are the main reason for their dissatisfaction. Their concerns are well-founded, given that ongoing strikes among doctors have caused the cancellation or postponement of nearly a million appointments.

Wait times for treatment are at an unprecedented level in Canada. Last year, the median wait from referral by a GP to receiving treatment from a specialist was more than 27 weeks. To clear the backlog, authorities in several provinces are turning to private, for-profit clinics that operate outside the conventional state-funded system. system.

Some Canadians have begun traveling to the United States to undergo urgent surgeries. In fact, health officials in British Columbia sent hundreds of cancer patients across the border to Washington state for treatment earlier this summer.

In Britain, private healthcare providers and insurers have recently seen significant gains in popularity among people stuck on waiting lists for specialist treatments.

The American health insurance system is not perfect. But the proverbial grass isn’t greener north of the border or across the Atlantic. A complete government takeover of the American health care system, a la Medicare for All, would make the lives of American patients much worse.

Sally C. Pipes is President and CEO and Thomas W. Smith Health Policy Fellow at the Pacific Research Institute. His latest book is False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All (Meeting 2020). Follow her on Twitter @sallypipes.