The Fact Checker at the Washington Post examines Sen. Bernie Sanders’s proposal for Medicare for All to determine whether it would actually save most people money:
So to an average family of four, the cost of health care appears to be $12,000. (Basic economics says the employer contribution is part of the overall paycheck, but most people don’t “feel†that money.)
So if Sanders wants most families to feel as if they’re saving money, any tax increase from Medicare-for-all would have to be less than the visible cost of health care — that is, that $12,000. But that’s going to be difficult, no matter how you run the numbers.
As a reader service, we will identify four aspects of Sanders’s Medicare-for-all proposal — or any health-care proposal, for that matter — that dramatically affect its cost and could make it difficult to deliver the promised savings: provider payments, health-care benefits, cost-sharing and administrative savings from a consolidated system.
ultimately drawing the conclusion that whether the plan will actually save Americans any money depends on the assumptions you’re willing to make and only the most optimistic assumptions result in any cost savings. Those assumptions include that reimbursement will be at the Medicare rates and that will have no effect on availability or quality of services.
Or, said another way, Uwe Reinhardt was right and what actually matters is not how who pays but the prices that we pay. The Congress has demonstrated time and time again that it’s not willing to control health care spending. Assuming that it will suddenly change has a name in public policy circles: “time inconsistency”.
If you take the most positive approach it does great. The most negative approach and it does poorly. We are surprised at this? What happened to the Mercatus estimate that showed large savings? At any rate, I think Sanders version is per in the sky, the equivalent of saying I am going to build a 30 foot wall along the entire border and Mexico will pay for it.
Steve
The Mercatus estimate explicitly used the most optimistic projections. In a separate article the author said he did not believe the most optimistic projections were likely.
Sanders and everyone who supports M4A is either stupid (like believing in the hocus-pocus known as MMT) or knows it’s fiscally impossible. That’s not the point. The point is to promise whatever is necessary in order to seize power and then ensure it’s retained indefinitely, after which all promises made beforehand will be discarded.