The Senate healthcare bill now on life-support may, like RyanCare before it, be revived through the injections of public money and minor policy variations needed to move recalcitrant conservatives off Stop. Unfortunately, both the House and Senate versions of the bill accept the idea that government has a natural role in health care delivery and therefore pave the way to single-payer health care -- and, politics aside, an American single-payer system would be a disaster for the world. The problems with single-payer are neatly captured by two well-known sayings: that he who pays the piper calls the tune, and that power, particularly absolute power, corrupts. Single-payer systems replace the health care customer with the government customer -- and the government customer cares about meticulously completed paperwork, not health care outcomes. In effect, what happens when government gains control of the payment stream is that the payment stream is then used to control health care...(Read Full Post)