Going back to David Brooks column... take a moment to consider what how this transition to single payer will play out for taxpayers. The 170 million or so American's who have work subsidized private insurance (think Union labors and also the college educated middle class working for large companies) will be looking at a one size fits all insurance plans that likely don't offer as much as what they've got now; not to mention much longer waits for things like seeing specialists. Also the $33 Trillion price tag is dependent on politicians "ruthlessly" forcing spending cuts down the throats of special interests (which I think we'd both agree is easier said then done in a world where Citizens United is the law of the land).
I agree we need to find a way to lower the cost of healthcare... but good intentions don't make this a winning political issue for democrats.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/opinion/medicare-for-all.html?module=inline
"Once they learn that Medicare for all would eliminate private insurance and raise taxes, only 37 percent of Americans support it, according to a
Kaiser Family Foundation survey. In 2010, Republicans scored an enormous electoral victory because voters feared that the government was taking over their health care, even though Obamacare really didn’t. Now, under Medicare for all, it really would. This seems like an excellent way to re-elect Donald Trump.
The government would also have to transition. Medicare for all works only if politicians ruthlessly enforce those spending cuts. But in our system of government, members of Congress are terrible at fiscal discipline. They are quick to cater to special interest groups, terrible at saying no. To make single-payer really work, we’d probably have to scrap the U.S. Congress and move to a more centralized parliamentary system.
Finally, patient expectations would have to transition. Today, getting a doctor’s appointment is annoying but not onerous. In Canada, the
median wait time between seeing a general practitioner and a specialist is 8.7 weeks; between a G.P. referral and an orthopedic surgeon, it’s nine months. That would take some adjusting."
