I'm John Bachelor. I welcome

Veronique Di Riggi of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,

health care in America. I learned from a column at Creator's Syndicate just posted by

Veronique that her colleague, Brookings Institution economist Jessica Riedel, has offered

a challenge to those who favor single-payer health care.

The challenge is this. A, provide a progressive bill that specifies a provider payment system

that actually saves money under America's existing already very expensive health infrastructure.

And B, provide a financing mechanism to replace the roughly

$32 trillion in private premiums and out-of-pocket costs that would need to be covered by

federal taxes over the next decade. Wow. Veronica, a very good evening to you. I presume that this challenge has not

been met, but there are voices, very prominent, colorful voices in America who believe it can be

achieved, and there are said to be bills in the House and Senate, as there have been before,

again providing for the single-payer health care,

which means all of us are going to pay for our health care. Isn't that what the national health

system is in Britain, which I hear routinely when I talk to London, has failed everyone so badly.

They don't even have to fix it. Good evening to you, Veronique.

Good evening, John. I thought this was actually a remarkably great challenge because the

proponent of single payer healthcare are always so loud and vocal. And the calls have been

renewed recently by Tom Sayer during his campaign to the governorship of California.

And of course, the complaint is always, this is insane.

Healthcare is so expensive, unaffordable for people.

Let's replace it with single-payer system and it will be better. Everyone will pay much

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