Proponents of Single Payer Health Care argue that the current private health system is rife with unnecessary overhead and that the cost savings of a “Medicare For All” approach would provide better coverage at a lower overall cost.

I have already commented on the failure of these folks to count many of public health insurance’s overhead costs such as the excess burden of taxes used to finance the programs. But there are other costs that are also ignored. Many of these socialized plans involve significant rationing of care which imposes serious quality issues and waiting times on patients. These are real costs that are not stated by proponents of single payer. Indeed, even in Medicare we see 26% of enrollees in traditional fee for service having no usual doctor vs. 8% for Medicare Advantage Plans.

More than twice the number of traditional Medicare enrollees report trouble getting treated as opposed to competitive Advantage Plans. While these costs are difficult to quantify they are indeed real and dramatically overstate the “lower overhead” of public insurance.