What Won't Work

Over at EconLog, Arnold Kling offers a short explanation of why a single-payer health care system won't work...

On health care, I am certain that a single-payer system will not produce enough efficiency to solve the financial problems of health care. After all, Medicare is more fiscally unsound than our private health care system. As an aside, while I was in St. Louis we had dinner with a retired doctor. She told of an incident where, as a patient, she went to see a dermatologist about a rash. The dermatologist looked at her and told she was fine. This proved to be correct. However, he billed Medicare for $700 for surgery. She called Medicare to report the fraud, and, after she finally got through after considerable time in voice-mail hell, the person told her that, "No, everything is fine. Our records show that you had the surgery."