The leading current Senate bill to establish single-payer health insurance in the United States sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would cost nearly $32.6 trillion according to a new report from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. To put this in perspective, “Medicare for all” would nearly double the size of the already bloated federal government says Investors Business Daily.
The analysis finds that Sanders’s health-care plan would result in a significant increase in government spending. In fact, doubling all tax collections in the country would not provide the necessary funds to pay for $32 trillion plan. “A doubling of all currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan,” says the report.
“Enacting something like ‘Medicare for all’ would be a transformative change in the size of the federal government,” said Charles Blahous, the study’s author. Blahous was a senior economic adviser to former President George W. Bush and a public trustee of Social Security and Medicare during the Obama administration reports the AP.
There’s no doubt health care quality in the U.S. would decrease under a plan like Sanders. It’s that simple.
According to Investors Business Daily, here’s what health care in the U.S. would look like as a result of Sanders Medicare for all plan:
“There would be chronic shortages of doctors nationwide. Hospital overcrowding would be epidemic. Waits for everything from hip replacements to cataract surgery to cancer treatments would be extensive. Drug innovation would come to a virtual standstill. And there would be endless fights over the size of the government’s health budget, along with massive amounts of waste, fraud, and abuse.”
“Medicare for all” isn’t just wishful thinking. It’s a dangerous delusion says Inventors Business Daily.
Responding to the study, Sanders took aim at the Mercatus Center, which receives funding from the conservative Koch brothers. Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch is on the center’s board.
“If every major country on earth can guarantee health care to all, and achieve better health outcomes, while spending substantially less per capita than we do, it is absurd for anyone to suggest that the United States cannot do the same,” Sanders said in a statement. “This grossly misleading and biased report is the Koch brothers response to the growing support in our country for a ‘Medicare for all’ program,” reports the AP.
Numerous Democratic lawmakers have come out in support of a single payer health system after Sanders brought the policy into the spotlight during his 2016 presidential run.
Even with the bizarre price tag of $32 trillion, Vox attempted to explain why the ‘medicare for all’ plan really isn’t that expensive.
Take a look at a headline at Vox from Monday, “Bernie Sanders’s $32 trillion Medicare-for-all plan is actually kind of a bargain.” Really? Spending $32 trillion on health care in this country is a bargain?
