The attack on Sanders’ Medicare-for-all plan is ridiculous

[LuckyTheDog]

By Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein

The Urban Institute and the Tax Policy Center today released analyses of the costs of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ domestic policy proposals, including single-payer national health insurance. They claim that Sanders’ proposals would raise the federal deficit by $18 trillion over the next decade.
We won’t address all of the issues covered in these analyses, just single-payer Medicare for all. To put it bluntly, the estimates (which were prepared by John Holahan and colleagues) are ridiculous. They project outlandish increases in the utilization of medical care, ignore vast savings under single-payer reform, and ignore the extensive and well-documented experience with single-payer systems in other nations – which all spend far less per person on health care than we do.

The authors’ anti-single-payer bias is also evident from their incredible claims that physicians’ incomes would be squeezed (which contradicts their own estimates positing a sharp rise in spending on physician services), and that patients would suffer huge disruptions, despite the fact that the implementation of single-payer systems elsewhere, as well as the start-up of Medicare, were disruption-free.

MORE HERE: http://yonside.com/attack-sanders-plan-ridiculous/

[Gothmog]

1. Krugman-Sanders health plan looks a little bit like a standard Republican tax-cut plan

Prof. Krugman has been saying for some time that the Sanders plan did not add up and Prof. Krugman was correct http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/19/weakened-at-bernies/?_r=0

On health care: leave on one side the virtual impossibility of achieving single-payer. Beyond the politics, the Sanders “plan” isn’t just lacking in detail; as Ezra Klein notes, it both promises more comprehensive coverage than Medicare or for that matter single-payer systems in other countries, and assumes huge cost savings that are at best unlikely given that kind of generosity. This lets Sanders claim that he could make it work with much lower middle-class taxes than would probably be needed in practice.

To be harsh but accurate: the Sanders health plan looks a little bit like a standard Republican tax-cut plan, which relies on fantasies about huge supply-side effects to make the numbers supposedly add up. Only a little bit: after all, this is a plan seeking to provide health care, not lavish windfalls on the rich — and single-payer really does save money, whereas there’s no evidence that tax cuts deliver growth. Still, it’s not the kind of brave truth-telling the Sanders campaign pitch might have led you to expect.

Again, as noted by Prof. Krugman this plan does not add up.

[merrily]

4. And Reich and others say it does add up.

Show me where Krugman predicted the crash of 2008 and maybe I'll give a crap about his partisan economic commentary.

[Gothmog]

5. Denial is not just a river in Africa

[merrily]

2. A part of DU claimed Obamacare was only a first step toward Medicare for All.

Now, the same segment claims Obamacare is the best we can do.

Says a lot about how much credence to give.

[CrowCityDem]

3. Since the plan initially called to save more on drugs than we actually spend, criticism is warranted