A cautionary tale

The Democratic presidential candidate field seems to have two main proposals to sell: 100% renewable energy and "Medicare for all". It sounds wonderful, and no doubt millions of voters will fall for it. I have already suggested in a previous post looking at Mark Mills’ excellent paper The “New Energy Economy: An Exercise in Magical Thinking” to inject some reality into the first proposal.

With respect to the second proposal, universal government health care, I recommend reading tonight's Washington Post article Why Vermont’s single-payer effort failed and what Democrats can learn from it. 

The article speaks for itself, but I would just note two additional things: (1) we already have a government health plan for veterans, the Veteran's Administration. If you have been following that grimy story over the past few years, you might be a bit leery of having the government handle your own health care. And (2) estimates for the cost of "Medicare for All" (which candidates seem to avoid mentioning) from independent experts puts the cost at somewhere between $2.5 trillion and 3.5 trillion a year, or roughly as much as the government now spends yearly on everything, and we are already financing much of that with yet more borrowing.

Not that Republicans have anything more attractive to offer (or anything at all to offer??), but these Democratic ideas are simply impractical, lovely as they sound on the campaign trail..