Even though the bumbling Republicans can't seem to repeal the "A"CA, we're not necessarily inexorably sliding toward single-payer

Why not?

Because enough post-Americans understand that its costs are impossible to cover that they're not going to sign on.

Sally Pipes, CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, explains in an IBD column:

Fifty-three percent support single payer, according to a June 2017 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

But this supposed support is a mirage. According to the same Kaiser poll, 62% would oppose single-payer if it gave the government too much power over health care. Sixty percent would reject it if it increased taxes.

Single-payer would do both. Sanders estimated that the single-payer plan he proposed during his presidential campaign would cost $1.4 trillion a year. To cover that cost, the plan included a 2.2% income tax, a 6.2% tax on employers and additional taxes on the wealthy.

Even a genie couldn't deliver single-payer at a cost that low. The liberal Urban Institute's analysis of Sanders' campaign plan found that federal expenditures would surge $32 trillion over its first 10 years.

Even those who are inclined toward collectivist approaches to health-care policy can see that Sanders is being supremely irresponsible. He has no idea where the money would come from, and that unsettles a lot of folks:

 Sanders admits that his plans for paying for his bill are imaginary. "Rather than give a detailed proposal about how we're going to raise $3 trillion a year, we'd rather give the American people options," he told the Washington Post.

That's not good enough for many of Sanders' ideological fellow travelers. Indiana University professor and New York Times contributor Aaron Carroll, who is sympathetic to the idea of single-payer, said, "I have a problem with plans that offer the moon and don't explain what they're sacrificing." Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., said of single-payer, there's an "issue about how you make sure there will be adequate resources put into health care."

And we have some state-as-policy-laboratories evidence to use for drawing some conclusions:

Three states have already seen their single-payer dreams go "poof" after looking at the price tag.

Consider Sanders' home state of Vermont. Back in 2010, Gov. Peter Shumlin ran for the state's top job on a pro-single-payer platform.

An analysis later found that the plan would have cost $4.3 billion — equivalent to just about the entire state budget. Paying for the plan would have required new 11.5% payroll and 9.5% income taxes. So in 2014, Shumlin abandoned the idea, claiming that "the time isn't right" and single-payer "might hurt our economy."

Last November, 80% of voters in Colorado rejected a ballot measure that would have created a single-payer system. The proposal would have imposed several taxes, including a 10% payroll levy, and still would have left the state to deal with a $7.8 billion deficit within a decade.

California recently pressed pause on a single-payer proposal that would have cost the state $400 billion annually — double the state budget. Not surprisingly, the bill's proponents offered no details about how they'd pay for their plan. 

But as I said the other day, to get to the point where the free-market argument would be widely understood and generate mass enthusiasm, it's necessary to peel back decades of layers of wonkery, notions that the argument must be couched in kitchen-table populist appeals focusing on cost, and, of course, this idea, perpetuated so effectively by progressives over the last century, that government should be in the business of "providing services."

A rather tall order, but we are helped by the numbers that are plain when one looks into what Sanders-style health care would cost.