The late, great Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman said it best: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

Friedman’s pithy proverb reminds us that there is also no “free health care.” It’s a timely reminder, as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is making a public push for his “Medicare for All” bill.

While liberals have long advocated “single-payer” systems for health care, what’s new this time is that they are coalescing around a plan. Sixteen Senate Democrats are co-sponsoring Sanders’ bill, and 120 Democrats in the House have signed on to a similar approach.

Make no mistake: If Americans were ever foolish enough to take Sanders’ “single-payer” prescription, they would suffer a fiscal fever the likes of which they have never even imagined.

Last year, two separate analyses—one from the Urban Institute and another from Professor Kenneth Thorpe at Emory University—outlined in dreadful detail the fiscal consequences of Sanders’ 2016 proposal.

Though the analysts differed on their assumptions and calculated conclusions based on different models, they both came to the same conclusion: The Sanders “single-payer” bill is going to cost the American people far more than the senator and his academic and congressional allies claim, and the taxes to finance this massive enterprise are going to be huge.

Read the source article at The Heritage Foundation