The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal cites a 2013 analysis of a House bill proposing Medicare-for-all. The study is 8 pages long, but unfortunately the Journal didn't bother to read any of them.
So here are the facts from the study.
The current level of federal government health care spending is $1.344 trillion, or $13.4 trillion over 10 years. (It also collects $110 billion/year from other funding sources.)
Current spending on federal government programs to be applied to funding HR 676 amounts to $1,344 billion.3 This includes federal spending for the Medicare program, the Medicaid program, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Other funding sources include $47 billion in revenue from new Medicare taxes included in the Affordable Care Act of 2010, and the remaining 20% of out-of-pocket spending by individuals. Together, these funding sources amount to $1,454 billion of spending retained for funding HR 676 in 2014. (Page 3)Yes, that's nearly $15 trillion, and yes, that spending won't go anywhere under a Medicare-for-all plan, but it's not "new federal spending." Not even a little bit.
What would in fact be new spending is costs associated with system improvements. Those amount to $343 billion annually, or $3.4 trillion over a 10-year period.
It would extend coverage to all uninsured Americans. It would reduce barriers to access for the currently insured by eliminating burdensome co-payments, deductibles and other out-of-pocket spending for medical care. It would offer improved benefits by covering services like dental and long-term care. It would eliminate inequity in the treatment of less-affluent patients by paying providers the same fee for each patient regardless of income or employment.5 These improvements would cost an estimated $343 billion annually. (Page 4)That does not include a one-time transition cost of $51 billion, which, since it's a one-time transition cost, would only amount to $5 billion/year over 10 years. Altogether, new costs amount to $348 billion in new spending per year over 10 years, or $3.48 trillion over 10 years.
Transition costs of implementing HR 676 would include the cost of unemployment insurance and retraining of displaced insurance and provider administrative personnel.6 In addition, the cost of converting investor-owned health care facilities to non-profit status would be incurred and is spread out over 15 years.7 Including transition costs of $51 billion in the first year, the estimated cost of expanding and improving Medicare is $394 billion. See Table 2.A far cry from $15 trillion. Now let's look at the savings.
We save $300 billion per year or $3 trillion over 10 years in:
"savings from excess revenue, reduced health-care spending because of a slowing in the rate of health-care inflation, and interest savings," (Page 12)... and $592 billion per year or $5.9 trillion over 10 years in:
"administrative savings from the single-payer system, on providers’ overhead costs, and on administrative expense among insurers, Medicaid, and employers ... adding in the savings on prescription drugs. (Page 7)So just by adopting Medicare-for-all, we can realize nearly $900 billion/year or $9 trillion over 10 years right there in eliminated costs, far more than offsetting the $3.48 trillion in new costs.
Again, this isn't my study. This is the study hand-picked by the Wall Street Journal, and somehow they concluded that it found Medicare-for-all will add $15 trillion in new federal expenditures. It's a staggering level of incompetence, even for a Murdoch-owned rag.
Shame on them, and shame on the so-called progressives who wasted no time jumping all over this report to bash Sanders and, more importantly, the idea of universal health care.
Source:
http://www.pnhp.org/...