Bernie Sanders was interviewed by the Washington Post on Tuesday and when asked what the price of his Medicare-for-all plan would be, he casually answered that it would be 30 to 40 trillion over ten years.
Oh, is that all?
The NTK Network reports:
Bernie Sanders Admits Medicare for All Would Cost Up to $40 TrillionSen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) admitted during an interview with the Washington Post on Tuesday that Medicare for All, his preferred government-run health care system, could cost up to $40 trillion over a 10-year span.he Washington Post’s Robert Costa asked Sanders to put a number on what his proposal might cost.“Somewhere between $30 trillion and $40 trillion over a 10-year period,” Sanders responded.Sanders’ astronomical estimate aligns with a Mercatus Center study conducted last year that pegged the 10-year cost to be about $32.6 trillion.A senior research strategist from Mercatus testified before Congress and said that “doubling all currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax would be insufficient to finance” Medicare for All.Sanders typically avoids direct discussions about the costs associated with Medicare for All. Frequently, he qualifies the massive price tag by noting that Medicare for All eliminates premiums, co-pays, and other costs associated with the current system.
Watch the video:
During the same interview, Sanders admitted that this would raise taxes on the middle class, explaining that healthcare isn’t free. Wait. It isn’t?
It’s worth noting that not everyone on the left is for this idea.
Joe Lockhart was White House press secretary under Bill Clinton. He writes at CNN:
Medicare for All is a political loserThe debate among the Democratic presidential candidates about universal health coverage calls to mind a couple of political truths. First, most things that sound too good to be true are, in fact, not true. Second, if you want to take away a public benefit, you’d better have a good replacement for it first.Three candidates are for full-blown Medicare for All, which means eliminating all employer-provided private insurance. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Mayor Bill de Blasio argue that only this fundamental restructuring of our health care system will cover all Americans. The idea seems popular on the surface. According to a poll from the Kaiser Foundation, 56% of Americans say they support full Medicare for All. But when respondents are told important details about the plan — like how much it costs, and how it abolishes private insurance — that number slips.In similar polls, when voters are presented with the full details of the Sanders and Warren plans, support falls dramatically. A poll done by David Binder for Third Way found a dramatic drop when factoring in the cost, the increase in payroll tax to pay for it, and the potential for the GOP-controlled Congress to have ultimate control of health care decisions including reproductive rights. That last piece of info drops support for the program to only 23% of Americans.
One of the issues I have with the entire argument over Medicare-for-all, is the way the numeric value of a trillion is thrown around. Most people don’t grasp the enormity of it:
Featured image via YouTube.
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