From an editorial this past weekend:

A single-payer system would guarantee that health-care services need to be rationed to control costs. Affluent Americans would buy access to health-care services that would be out of reach to lower-income Americans. Reimbursements to providers will decrease because the government is controlling the purse strings, causing fewer physicians to practice and the quality of care to decline. Our tax burden will grow and both employers and employees will have to pick up the tab.

Single-payer advocates like to talk about the supposed low administrative costs of Medicare and how universal coverage will be much more efficient. What they don’t tell you is that their figures ignore the administrative costs transferred to the private insurers (such as Highmark, HealthAmerica and UPMC Health Plan) who provide the vast majority of Medicare coverage through managed care products. When this is taken into account, Medicare does not run much more efficiently than any private sector health insurance program.