Krugman Tells the Truth About the Horrific Statist Healthcare Plan That Bernie Sander Has Proposed.

This is pretty amazing coming from Paul Krugman, but he gets it correct.

He writes in The New York Times:

[Bernie] Sanders...doesn’t do bipartisanship. He doesn’t even do unipartisanship, refusing to call himself a Democrat even as he seeks the party’s nomination. But what Sanders appears to believe is that he can convince voters not just to support progressive policies, but to support sweeping policy changes that would try to fix things most people don’t consider broken.

That, after all, is what his Medicare for All push, which would eliminate private insurance, amounts to. He is saying to the 180 million Americans who currently have private insurance, many of whom are satisfied with their coverage: “I’m going to take away the insurance you have and replace it with a government program. Also, you’re going to pay a lot more in taxes. But trust me, the program will be better than what you have now, and the new taxes will be less than you currently pay in premiums.”...

Polling shows that support for Medicare for All falls off drastically when people are informed that it would eliminate private insurance and require higher taxes.

You might try to rationalize the Sanders position by saying that Medicare for All is an aspirational plan, and that in practice he would be willing to accept a more gradualist approach. But that’s not what his behavior suggests. On the contrary, Sanders has conspicuously refused to support measures that would enhance Obamacare, even as a temporary expedient.

For Sanders, then, it seems to be single-payer or bust.

-RW