Single payer and private insurance.

[Warren Stupidity]

There is a lot of disinformation floating around here and elsewhere regarding Sander's Medicare for all proposal and its costs and benefits. In particular it has been asserted repeatedly that the 6.2% payroll tax paid by employers is an onerous burden that will be cost shifted onto the employee (presumably in the form of lower wages, although the more standard argument is that it would be passed on in the form of higher prices for the consumer of whatever it is the employer produces.)

The issue needs to be examined. There are two numbers of interest. 1. 6.2% of an average workers salary. 2. Current average employer per worker healthcare costs.

Let's look at the current situation first:

Annual premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage reached $17,545 this year, up 4 percent from last year, with workers on average paying $4,955 towards the cost of their coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research & Education Trust 2015 Employer Health Benefits Survey. The 2015 survey includes information on the use of incentive for employer wellness programs, plan cost-sharing as well as firm offer rate. Survey results are released here in a variety of ways, including a full report with downloadable tables on a variety of topics, summary of findings, and an article published in the journal Health Affairs.

http://kff.org/health-costs/report/2015-employer-health-benefits-survey/

So the current average per employee cost is $17,545 with the employer paying 12,590 of that cost.

Average individual income from SS data was $46,481 for 2014, the latest data available.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/AWI.html#Series

The employer tax on the average income would be 2881.82. That is nearly a 10,000 dollar reduction.

So going back to the passthrough assertion, that employers will transfer cost changes to employees (and more accurately to product cost to consumers) we can conclude that the employer payroll tax will reduce prices and/ or increase wages.

[Proserpina]

1. Americans are innumerate--when they want to be

Here's hoping that enough of those pissed off by ACA can figure this out.

[CommonSenseDemocrat]

2. Medicare's tax is not 6.2%, that is for Social Security

[Warren Stupidity]

5. Sanders proposal sets an employer payroll tax of 6.2%.

[CommonSenseDemocrat]

10. I think that rate might be a bit too low to fund single payer.

Perhaps if you added that on top of the Medicare tax, the funding for health care could be sufficient, but politics aside, health care needs to be funded at a rate of a bit more than 6.2%.

[Warren Stupidity]

11. Perhaps you would benefit from reading the proposal.

The employer payroll tax us only one of several revenue sources. My op is addressing one dishonest attack on the proposal.

[Hoyt]

3. I want to see how we get a $10,000 reduction per family. I get the math,

but just saying the employer tax will be 6.2% of income doesn't mean it's really enough to cover the cost of the employee's family, not to mention -- non-working people, today's uninsured, eliminating deductibles, eliminating coinsurance, dental, hearing aids, etc., that people seem to believe is in Sanders' plan.

I agree covering everyone is what we have to do. Sanders just needs to be honest about the cost of his plan.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. That s a different argument. I am simply addressing

Last edited Mon Jan 18, 2016, 02:12 PM - Edit history (1)

in this op the blatant lie that the 6.2% payroll tax represents an onerous burden on employers that will be shifted onto employees.

[Hoyt]

7. You mention a $10,000 savings.

[Warren Stupidity]

8. Yes. That is true.

That number is the reduction in average per employee employer costs comparing the 6.2% payroll tax to the current average per employee private insurance premium cost which the payroll tax replaces.

You seem to want to discuss how a public system can acheive such a large decrease in per employee costs, which is a related but different discussion. I will note however that the funding part of the proposal includes other non-payroll tax revenue streams. You have read the proposal, right?

[Doctor_J]

4. And if Mrs. Clinton becomes president, it will get worse, every year, until an actual Dem is

elected. The Fan Club has circled the wagons around this abomination to the point where people who (wrongly) call themselves democrats are now protecting the Heritage Foundation's Middleman Multiplication And Profit Protection Act.

[Uncle Joe]

9. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Warren Stupidity.