The Post claimed that countries with the kind of single-payer plans Sanders likes “ration care in ways that federal health programs in the United States … do not.”
We can debate specific numbers, but the Post’s unstated assumption – that the quality of health care received by Americans is superior to the quality received by, say, Canadians, from their single-payer, mostly publicly-funded system – is not borne out by evidence.
Despite the fact that Canada spends only 10.4 percent of its GDP on health care in contrast to 16 percent of GDP in the United States, Canadians enjoy lower rates of infant mortality and longer life expectancy than citizens of the United States.
True, Canadians typically wait longer to consult specialists and get non-emergency surgery than we do. But a higher share of Canadians get medical attention when they need it. Even after the Affordable Care Act, some 26 million Americans – about 10 percent of the population – still lack health insurance, and millions more rarely see a doctor because they can’t afford ever-increasing co-payments and deductibles.
Robert Reich: The Washington Post is lying to you about Bernie Sanders
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