Why can European countries afford universal health care but not the U.S.?

By Kent R. Kroeger (September 26, 2018)

“It has been the goal of Democrats since Franklin D. Roosevelt to create a universal health care system guaranteeing health care to all people,” starts Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ stump speech as he promotes his Medicare-4-All (M4A) legislation. “Every other major industrialized nation has done so.”

He is correct. All major industrialized nations have either a straight single-payer system (Korea, Canada), a Beveridge Model single-payer system (UK, Sweden, Norway) or other type of universal coverage system (Germany, Australia, Spain). The U.S. stands along among industrialized countries in how it addresses health care.

But Sanders is wrong to suggest all Democrats share the goal of universal health care. In reality, the party has been, and remains, deeply divided on this issue. If the party were as united as Sanders suggests, they would have passed a single-payer system in 2008 instead of Obamacare which passed without any Republican support.

Why didn’t the Democrats pass a single-payer system? Because vested interests in the current private, employer-based health care system — physicians, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies — are too powerful within the Democratic Party to allow passage…