America marches blindly toward single-payer, says PRI

US Democrat presidential front runner Hillary Clinton just dipped her toe a little bit further into the waters of single-payer health care, prodded by her competitor for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders, according to a posting on the website of the Pacific Research Institute think-tank.

Last week, she called for allowing more people to join Medicare - the government-run healthcare program for seniors - by allowing those “55 or 50 and up” to buy into it. Mr Sanders can no doubt take credit for pulling her further left - his proposal to expand Medicare to cover all Americans has evinced widespread cheers from his partisans, the PRI noted.

But the record of other single-payer systems at home and abroad should silence those cheers. Single-payer would devastate the quality of health care that patients receive in this country - and would rob them blind in the process.