Single-payer health sounds great to most people until they learn of how they'll have to pay for it.
A new poll by the Associated Press displays the challenges that Democratic presidental candidate Bernie Sanders faces in convincing voters to entirely scrap the private health insurance industry.
Although 39 percent –– a plurality –– of those surveyed said they favored taking the leap in favor of single-payer, the percentage in support of the policy dips dramatically when told their taxes would rise as a result. 40 percent of those who initially supported the policy switch to opposing it.
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Advocates of single-payer argue that tax increases are offset by the reduction in health care costs that eliminating private insurance would ideally bring. As Sanders and others have pointed out repeatedly, the U.S. spends significantly more on health care than any other industrialized country, in total dollars and as a percentage of GDP.
It's not just taxes that scare people away from single-payer. Many are worried about losing what they already have, namely their employer-sponsored health insurance. The poll found that a significant number of single-payer supporters became opponents when told they might see their current coverage go away.
If Sanders made it to a general election campaign, you can be sure that the criticisms of his health care plan would not be limited to the increase in taxes and the loss of employer-sponsored care. If "death panels" were invoked in response to Obamacare, the same genre of criticism invoking government rationing of care would likely make up a big part of the debate.
Hillary Clinton, the favorite for the Democratic nomination, has stopped far short of proposing a single-payer plan, instead emphasizing the importance of defending and improving the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Clinton recently proposed, however, that she will continue to work towards a "public option" insurance program to compete with private plans, and that she will help states put in place their own public option if it is not politically feasible at the federal level.
Unlike almost any other Republican candidate in recent memory, Donald Trump has actually voiced support for single-payer systems in the past. Although he has lambasted Obamacare, generally his campaign has steered clear of the free market orthodoxy that has defined the GOP in recent years. Rather, Trump has stressed his commitment to protecting social security and Medicare, as well as imposing protectionist trade measures and deporting undocumented immigrants.
Thus, a Sanders-Trump showdown in the general election may not feature as many denunciations of socialism and big government from the GOP side, but should another candidate nab the nomination, such as Marco Rubio, it could be a different story.
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