Yesterday, I highlighted an exceptionally goofy Health Affairs post in which Merton Bernstein reiterates the usual tired talking points about Medicare, including the preposterous claim that Medicare has lower admin costs than private insurance.
Another talking point often repeated by single-payer advocates involves the virtually unlimited access to health care enjoyed by current beneficiaries of the Medicare program. Arnold Kling exposes the emptiness of that meme as follows:
Saying, “We don’t need to have any restraint on the use of medical services. Look at Medicare.” is like saying, “We don’t have to worry about the fish population. Look at all the fish we just caught.”
In other words, it is just as possible to “overfish” government health care as it is to overfish the Grand Banks. The supply of taxpayer money is finite, as is the supply of health care resources:
With the Medicare population growing and technology changing, the stress on the system is increasing. At some point, it will be unbearable. We are already approaching that point.
Yep.
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