Medicare for All cost studies: PERI vs the Urban Institute. Vuld Edone Community

[turbinetree]

Vuld Edone
Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.
Thursday October 17, 2019 · 10:27 AM EDT

Hi’.

It has become an habit of mine for the foreigner I am to talk about the studies done on Medicare-for-All. I talked about its pricetag and then briefly felt the need to remind people of the keyword that is cost control.

With Elizabeth Warren being grilled on “how to pay for a plan to reduce health care costs”, CNN relied on the Urban Institute’s second study (2019) to once again say M4A will bankrupt everyone and their grandma. I personally rely on Pollin et al. (2018) — or “the PERI study” — but, as the idiotic centrist that I am, I wanted to check if my preferate study was wrong.

So let’s try to forget about my prejudices towards a study whose bibliography is two pages long (compared to Pollin et alii’s thirteen, let me be petty), we’ll just look at the numbers.

(As a reminder, there are other studies out there, I’m just singling those two out.)

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/17/1893079/-Medicare-for-All-cost-studies-PERI-vs-the-Urban-Institute?utm_campaign=spotlight

[Hoyt]

1. Seems time for Warren to tell us what it is going to cost by family size, income, etc., in taxes or

premiums. "We are already paying it" doesn't cut it.

They know taxes will have to go up -- which if fine because the increase will supposedly replace premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and cover everyone -- but they can't/won't tell us how much.

One reason they can't do that is that they have other proposals that will require taxes to increase such as: bolstering Social Security, college debt, "free" college, child care, climate change, infra structure, education, jobs training, etc.

The top 1%, 10%, or even 25% aren't going to pay for all that because their wealth is mostly on paper.

Another reason is it's the same problem they ran into in Vermont, Colorado and California. The required tax increase -- even though we are already paying it -- is so large that no one who plans on getting elected has the guts to say the number.

Another reason is that young people -- who are generally healthy -- aren't going to be happy with what they'll have to pay to cover older/sicker citizens. You can tell them all day long that someday they will be old/sicker, but they aren't going to accept that.

Fact is, Public Option will get us to single payer quicker. Then, each citizen can look at the cost of the public option, compare it to private insurance offerings, and make an informed choice.

If the Public Option is good as we think, within a few years 80% of us will be on the Public Plan and it will be easier to tell the other 20% -- tough, you are now enrolled in "Medicare"-for-All.

[LeftTurn3623]

2. its like people do not understand politics

All the republicans want is a sound bite of her saying that taxes will go up and the republicans will run that nonstop until the election

The same answer is what she says. Middle class cost will go down - people will not listen to the entire answer that taxes will go up but they will pay less in overall cost

Stay strong EW and do not give them a sound bite

[BlueMississippi]

4. Democrats also pay taxes and are averse to a large tax bill.

It is not just republicans.

[LeftTurn3623]

6. again you make my point

If you spend $7,200 a year for heath Ins that is taking directly off your pay check by your employer at $300 twice a month.

But under Medicare For All that deduction no longer is applied but you pay $5,000 a year in taxes increase

Then you save $2,200 a year in cost saving - But guess what? Your taxes went up

EW does not want to get stuck saying middle class taxes will go up because they are actually saving money


Not sure how much simpler I can make this for people

[BlueMississippi]

7. She should come forward and explain it then

If people are going to save money from the additional taxes, she has nothing to fear.

[Danascot]

8. How's this for simple?

[Blue_true]

9. It is a trade off.

People pay more in taxes for vastly lower healthcare premiums. For most people, that is a significant net benefit that gets larger with family size. For example, a couple with two kids making $205,000 per year pays around $36,900 in federal income taxes. A family of four likely pays around $1400 per month in insurance premiums and that may be a low estimate. Assuming no other tax rates change, which is a reasonably sound assumption since states tax at set rates that have no relation to the Federal rate, raising the couple's tax rate to 20% and lowering their healthcare premium to $400 per month (the lower premium because they are now in a massive of scale plan with backstop of healthier younger and older people, so the risk of insuring that one couple dramatically decreased), has the couple paying $4,100 more per year in taxes, but saving $12,000 per year on healthcare premiums, with the added benefit that if a family member gets sick, large bills will be paid by the government, using the population scaling impact).

Now you can say what happens if the backstop for the couple fails, but the reality is that in an insurance plan that includes hundreds of millions of people, it is a statistical impossibility for the backstop to fail, short of the country contracting something like the Spanish Flu or worse.

[BlueMississippi]

3. Sen. Warren MUST disclose what the pricetag is and what it will cost families.

Hiding it will not be possible and more attention will be drawn to it.

If it is so hide-worthy, the price tag must be huge -- requiring as much as 65% of the income to be taxed.

[Blue_Adept]

5. Probably closer to 90%

Maybe even 95% if we're just throwing unfounded numbers out there.