Single-payer health care unworkable, too costly

In an attempt to halt Bernie Sanders’ rise in the polls, Hillary Clinton is waging a campaign against his single-payer health plan. Remarkably, one of Clinton’s main criticisms is that Sanders’ scheme would undermine the cause of federally controlled health care by giving too much power to the states. Yes, we must be in an election year.

As Clinton has put it, Sanders “wants to roll Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Affordable Care Act program, and private health insurance into a national system and turn it over to the states to administer.”

The real problem with a single-payer system, however, is much simpler: The approach has failed everywhere it has been tried — from Europe to Canada to Sanders’ own state of Vermont. In almost every instance, government-run health care has suppressed medical innovation and made it harder for patients to get the treatment they need at a price they can afford.

Both candidates ought to be discussing practical ways to fix our health system’s most serious flaw — too much government intervention. Instead, they’re quibbling over the many faults of a single-payer program that would dramatically lower the quality of care for all Americans.