How to Fix our Healthcare System: Medicare for All? A Public Option? Other Ideas?

[bust]

This thread began in the Welcome to Trump World thread, but it deserves one of its own.

If the promise is the Canadian model, then what you should expect would look something like what we have up here...

I don't know that overpromising is what I would worry about, I would suspect the missing key is how will it be paid for?

That's what makes a hash of everything. Assuming it was done entirely through taxes. It would likely mean between 2.5 Trillion and 3.5 Trillion per year.

Thanks for your account of the Canadian system [[follow the link above to see it). But your estimates of how much a similar system in the US would cost don't paint the full picture. They make it seem much more costly than it would be in reality.

Why? Because your estimate considers only how much the government would spend to provide the insurance, not how much we spend already, nor how much would be saved in reduced costs. At least according to researchers who have dug into this deeply.

The costs of the current system it would replace must not be ignored. They are paid for by a combination of the government [[taxes), employers, and largely, everyday Americans -- and we already pay a ton. $3.2 trillion in 2017 according to a study from the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts. Far more than any other nation, and more than twice as much per capita as Canada, according to Johns Hopkins.

When a renter paying $1000 per month moves into a $1100 apartment, the effect on their budget is $100, not $1100 in higher costs.

Here are the two important questions to consider:

1) How much more or less will it cost than we already spend?
2) How will it affect care?

Since we are talking costs, I'll put them in that order, and focus on #1. #2 is obviously important too.

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University conducted another study of the issue. They are a conservative think tank sponsored by the Koch brothers.

They estimated the outlays to provide the insurance would be about $32.6 trillion over 10 years, which is in line with your estimate.

That is also in line with the $32 trillion estimate from a study by the Urban Institute. It's about 11% above the $29.3 trillion estimate in the study from the University of Massachusetts.

But they also estimated the plan would result in $482 billion less health care spending and more than $1.5 trillion less administrative costs than if we changed nothing. Over 10 years, we'd spend $2 trillion less.

In other words, we'd pay $32.6 trillion for the new plan. But that would replace roughly $34.6 trillion we'd otherwise spend into our current health care system.

You see, our healthcare "rent" is already outrageously high. And our rent would go down.

Of course estimates are just estimates, the devil is in the details, and it's impossible to know precisely how all the details will play out.

And when Sanders gleefully pointed out the Mercatus report shows a $2 trillion savings [[that was not what their sponsors wanted to hear!) they said some of their assumptions regarding cost savings may have been too rosy.

But that is just one estimate, from the right side of the political spectrum.

Other studies have estimated lower costs and more savings, like the one from the University of Massachusetts, which says under the Sanders plan healthcare expenditures would drop nearly 10 percent, to $2.93 trillion per year. It estimates we'd save over $5 trillion over 10 years.

And don't forget the results!

• Everyone will have stable access to good health care.
• We will no longer need to pay copayments and deductibles.
• We will no longer be at risk of being thrown under the crippling cost of an accident or any other costly health event.
• Employers and employees will no longer need to contribute part of workers' pay into an employer-sponsored heath plan, so wages effectively go up.

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Read more about this [[or google it yourself):

Economic Analysis of Medicare for All
https://www.peri.umass.edu/publicati...dicare-for-all

'Medicare for all' could be cheaper than you think
https://www.umass.edu/sbs/news/facul...aper-you-think

U.S. Health Care Spending Highest Among Developed Countries
Americans on average continue to spend much more for health care—while getting less care—than people in other developed countries
https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-rele...countries.html

The Costs of a National Single-Payer Healthcare System
https://www.mercatus.org/publication...lthcare-system

The Sanders Single-Payer Health Care Plan: The Effect on National Health Expenditures and Federal and Private Spending
https://www.urban.org/research/publi...ew/full_report

Did conservative study show big savings for Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All plan?
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...gs-bernie-san/

Koch-Backed Think Tank Finds That “Medicare for All” Would Cut Health Care Spending and Raise Wages.
https://theintercept.com/2018/07/30/...th-care-wages/