Doctor shortages is a corporate lobby point – people still get sufficient care even if lines are longer

While the point is often exaggerated, it is true that wait times are somewhat longer in Canada and the U.K. than they are in this country. In the age of three-second Google searches, however, no one has any excuse for believing that this is because socialized health systems suffer from “doctor shortages.” Canada and the U.S. have exactly the same rate of physicians per capita (2.6). The British rate is a bit higher (2.8). And the highest rate in the world (8.2!) can be found in Cuba.

The reason wait times are higher in countries with socialized health systems isn’t that there aren’t as many doctors. It’s that there are more patients.

Of course, those waiting times could still be reduced by increasing the supply of doctors. If you want to do that, you should support two other left-wing policies typically endorsed by Medicare for All advocates—Free College for All so people can become doctors without burying themselves in student debt, and a more lenient immigration system so it would be easier for foreign doctors to move to the United States.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that for whatever reason we couldn’t combine Medicare for All with these other policies. We can implement it a la carte or not at all. How much weight should we assign to the Argument from Longer Waiting Times?

If the issue were that Canadians were dying in droves while they waited for specialist appointments, that would be a serious objection to Medicare for All, but we’ve already established that Canada has a much lower rate of “mortality amenable to healthcare” than the United States. Anyone who knows this but still objects to Medicare for All on the basis of wait times is in essence expressing the concern that the lines will be longer than the ones they’re used to because more people will be allowed to stand in them. Worse yet, from their perspective, everyone will be standing in the same line. (If America gets Medicare for All, upper-income Canadians can’t even go to the U.S. to buy their way to the head of the line!) A different way of putting all of this would be that basic fairness will have been achieved. Let’s do that.

Opponents of Medicare For All throw whatever talking points they can think of at it. The more Americans hear about single-payer healthcare, the more the insurance industry will viciously fight back with half-baked arguments designed to scare people into thinking that Medicare for All will mean worse, more expensive coverage rather than better, cheaper coverage. We have to be prepared. We need to understand the arguments against Medicare for All and be able to show why they don’t hold up. The case for the policy is straightforward and powerful, but people are also easily frightened by industry talking points. They need not be, though. Medicare for All is a good idea that will improve our lives and make us healthier and happier.