U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, the democratic socialist running for president, and the other socialist-minded contenders for the 2020 Democratic nomination, are hoping no one pays too much attention to international news.
Sanders and his ilk have been running around the country extolling the potentials of a Medicare for All, government-run health care system for the United States and holding up the semi-socialist countries of Western Europe – but especially in the Scandinavian region- as shining examples.
Two weeks ago today, just over a month before a national election, the government of one of those countries, Finland, collapsed over its inability to reform its health and welfare programs.
The country has long had a government-run health care system, but it is administered increasingly inefficiently by around 250 local municipalities. The recently collapsed center-right government, faced with an aging population and growing costs, wanted to create a more regionally administered system and – dare it be said – privatize some health care services.
Prime Minister Juha Sipila, who resigned along with the rest of his cabinet, said “there’s no other way for Finland to succeed” outside those reforms, which are thought to be able to save the country $3.4 billion.
Not surprisingly, the left-leaning and Green parties opposed such reforms.
A BBC report put the problem in perspective and should wake those in the U.S. who seem to have no worries about our country’s debt, its Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid systems, and the inefficient Affordable Care Act health care program.
“As an increasing number of [Finnish] people live longer in retirement,” the report said, “the cost of providing pension and healthcare benefits can rise. Those increased costs are paid for by taxes collected from the working-age population – who make up a smaller percentage of the population than in decades past.”
The report went on to note that similar problems are affecting Sweden and Denmark, two other countries that U.S. Democrats and socialist-minded individuals point to as examples for America.
“Nordic countries, where comprehensive welfare is the cornerstone of the social model,” Reuters reported, “have been the most affected.”
Only last year, Sanders had gushed over the country, tweeting that it only cost $60 to have a baby in Finland but $12,000 in the “profit-driven health care system” in the U.S.
“Take a look at what Finland, the happiest country in the world, is doing,” he tweeted. “If Finland can provide everyone with health care, send everyone to college for free and provide affordable child care, why can’t the U.S.?”
It sounds great until you understand that someone, somewhere is going to have to pay for it, and a Mercatus Center analysis has put the cost for Medicare for All at more than $32 trillion over 10 years.
So when the Kaiser Family Foundation asked Americans, who were more than willing to receive such largesse, 58 percent said they would oppose it if it eliminated all private insurance plans, and 60 percent would oppose it if it required higher taxes.
Evidently, then, most of us aren’t in a hurry to be Finland quite yet.