This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, October 15th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Bernie Sanders campaign is a little cagey about how a president

Sanders would hope to pay for his pricey for all plan.

Peter Suiterman of Reason magazine argues that the experience of

single-payer health care in Sanders home state of Vermont offers some key

lessons. Well I think what it tells us is just how hard it would be to get a

single-payer system along the lines that Bernie Sanders is thinking of with his

Medicare for All plan in place in the United States. What Vermont tried to do was to

pass and implement a state-based single-payer system

and they got in many ways further than any other state in the United States has

ever gotten in this process. But after several years of development,

what they basically realized was there's no public support for it and it's

going to cost an awful lot more than they initially thought. And that's going to require higher taxes than they initially

thought and even in Deep Blue Vermont, which elected Governor Pete Schumlin on a single-payer

platform. That's what he was elected to do was to put single-payer in place in Vermont.

Even in a state like that that is more open to high taxes that favors single-er that had real political momentum for it at the

State House they couldn't get it done and Schumlin ultimately abandoned the

plan and it failed and so I think those sorts of problems would be

present in any effort to put Medicare for all in place at a national level and if anything it would be harder.

So with respect to Vermont specifically I'm not an expert on their plan or for that matter

Bernie's plan but it seems to me that if you're doing it

...