PNHP: Recent attack on Bernie's Single Payer "Ridiculous"

[Ferd Berfel]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-himmelstein/the-urban-institutes-attack-on-single-payer-ridiculous-assumptions-yield-ridiculous-estimates_b_9876640.html

The Urban Institute’s Attack On Single Payer: Ridiculous Assumptions Yield Ridiculous Estimates


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.

(snip)

In summary, Holahan grossly underestimates the administrative savings under single payer; projects increases in the number of doctor visits and hospitalizations that far exceed the capacity of doctors and hospitals to provide this added care; and posits that our country would continue to pay much more for drugs and medical equipment than people in every other nation with national health insurance.

Rather than increasing national health spending, as Holahan claims, Sanders’ plan (and the plan proposed by Physicians for a National Health Program) would almost certainly decrease total health spending over the next 10 years.

[amborin]

1. KNR

[Faux pas]

2. Kickin' for reference

[AzDar]

3. Pretty sure all the sock-puppets posting that discredited drivel KNEW this... but posted it anyway.

Happens every few weeks...

[colsohlibgal]

4. Yes, This Study Is A Joke

Of course most of the MSM threw it out there like it was fact.

Oh and go with the rest of Bernie's plans and you will raise income a number of ways, and cut Pork like our more than bloated defense budget.

That they felt the need to trot out that nonsense must mean this race is still on.

[pat_k]

5. See also "Regarding the '18 trillion in debt" attack on Sanders' proposals

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511935929