Medicare-for-All Part II: A Risk assessment published on LinkedIn August 30, 2019.
There are substantial obstacles to MFA becoming law, which render MFA a high-risk proposition that could crowd out more moderate legislative proposals, include:
- Elimination of Private Health Insurance (Sec. 107), an industry that represents more than 6 % of our Gross Domestic Product.
- The Freedom of Choice (Sec. 103) provision which would most likely compromise quality and increase the cost of care.
- Elimination of managed care, the most proven method of controlling cost and quality of care.
- Eroding public support evidenced by multiple public opinion polls exploring MFA’s specifics.
- Legislative risk that MFA could never be enacted and build opposition to multi-payer proposals.
- Implementation risk: Failure to properly implement an extremely ambitious makeover of the health insurance market could lead to years of chaos.
- Underfunding/Rationing of Care because Congress would have complete control of the national healthcare budget.
And there is considerable evidence that a multi-payer system, common in Europe, performs better than single payer systems and is a better fit for the American market.