Mainstream Democrats Quietly Push for Single Payer

Excerpts from my Wall Street Journal op-ed

Conventional wisdom in Washington holds that so-called moderate Democrats who haven’t endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders’s single-payer healthcare plan support many coverage options.

But a white paper on healthcare reform from Oregon’s Ron Wyden, ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, shows that this is false. The report, released July 30, mentions the word “profit” or derivations thereof 185 times in an 86-page document, echoing New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rhetoric demonizing wealth. The outlined policies also resemble those of Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Sanders—proposals that Democrats previously rejected as too costly and disruptive, and that would move the country toward a fully government-run system….

The Wyden document avoids specific parameters, which makes precise cost estimates difficult. But its mantra of “reversing Republican cuts” from last year’s budget reconciliation bill—which among other things would expand health coverage for illegal immigrants—would cost more than $1 trillion over a decade, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. The CBO has estimated that extending enhanced ObamaCare subsidies would cost $350 billion over the same period. In 2020, I calculated that repealing the firewall [between employer plans and subsidized Exchange coverage] would lead to $2.2 trillion in higher subsidy spending over a decade for the estimated 24 million people who would switch from employer coverage to the exchanges. Enacting such proposals would cost trillions without factoring in the new cost-sharing assistance Mr. Wyden outlines.

Recall that congressional Democrats balked at enacting Mr. Biden’s Build Back Better Act after CBO revealed its long-term net cost would total $3 trillion if its major policies were extended over a decade. Mr. Wyden’s healthcare proposals could easily exceed that number without even touching other costly items on the left’s policy wish list like education and student loans, housing, child care and universal basic income.

Whether the legislative proposals Mr. Wyden drafts explicitly endorse a single-payer healthcare system is immaterial. Policies that centralize control of employer plans under government auspices—undermining employer coverage in the process—would lead to fully socialized medicine soon enough.

Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal…