Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont thinks that his time has come. With Obamacare in a death spiral and efforts in the Senate to repeal and replace it having collapsed, history has aligned for his “Medicaid for all” scheme. With that belief in mind, Sanders intends to offer a bill that would impose a Single Payer, government run health care system in America, similar to the ones that exist in Great Britain and Canada. However, as Hot Air notes, CNN’s Jake Tapper asks the one question about single payer that Sanders cannot answer around which all of his hopes and dreams revolve.

First, Sanders shows a lack of understanding of how private insurance works

Sanders first tries the say that single payer works cheaper because hospitals and other health care providers do not have to deal with multiple health insurance companies, figuring out various deductibles. However, the health care provider does not deal with that question. The insurance company does. In any event, in a computerized accounting system, that question is done pretty much automatically.

If Vermont couldn’t enact single payer, who could?

Tapper then asked the one question that Sanders could not answer, proving that single payer will never become a reality in the United States. He noted that Vermont, a few years ago, tried to enact a government run system and failed.

Sanders babbled on a little bit about the politics of single payer and the difficulty of dealing with drug and insurance companies. He seemed to have forgotten that Vermont had passed the law anyway in 2011, triumphing over these special interests. The factor that caused government health care to collapse was the impossibility of finding a way to pay for it, even in “cobalt blue” Vermont.

More recently, a similar effort failed in California, much to the annoyance of Sanders and his followers.

Sanders does not address the reason single payer ‘works’ in other countries

The real reason that single payer tends to be cheaper in countries like Canada and Great Britain is that treatments that are readily available in the United States are either not offered in those countries or one has to wait to receive them.

The infamous waiting lists in Canada has been covered exhaustively by the Fraser Institute. England approaches costs, in part, by allowing deathly ill patients to die. The case of Charlie Gard is an example of this.

The dream of single payer is that anyone can go to the doctor, get treated for what ails them, and not have to worry about getting a bill. The reality is something completely different.