The Costs of Medicare for All Are Rising Already

The Costs of Medicare for All Are Rising Already
(https://economics21.org/medicare-for-all-costs-rising-already)
Charles Blahous
AUGUST 26, 2019
HEALTH CARE

After my study of the costs of Medicare for All (M4A) was published last July, a fierce debate erupted over whether M4A, while dramatically increasing the costs borne by federal taxpayers, might nevertheless reduce total U.S. health expenditures. Now, just one year after my findings, we have substantial additional evidence that M4A would further increase, not reduce, national health spending.

 

Americans are progressively getting fatter, progressively getting sicker and progressively spending more on health cost. Notice how I didn't use healthcare because 90% of the average American lifestyle has nothing to do with caring for ones own health.

In just 30 short years we have reduced from cooking our own food to going into fast food restaurants to going through the drive thru of fast food restaurants to now having Uber deliver 2,000 calories of nothing but saturated fats and sugar.

Name the very preventable diseases this young child will have by the age of 30.

 

Major reason why M4A supposedly lowers national healthcare expenditures, and this if from the researcher/author of the Mercatus study Blahous, is because it cuts healthcare provider payments by 40%, the same as Medicare rates. But now experts and what people have said about the bill for M4A, was that it was merely using a similar medicare payment setting, not actual rates. If this is the case, and payment rates are not cut down to Medicare rates, than M4A, would actually increase overall national heathcare spending.

 

On this topic I firmly believe in starting at home and leading by example rather than word. People just get stubborn if you try to tell them how to live their lives.

Put your ideas into practice. It's a case of "if you build it they will come".

 

A Koch-funded think tank tries hard to pretend that it didn’t find savings from Bernie Sanders’ Medicare plan
https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-blahous-sanders-20180822-story.html

Next.

 

Not a surprise
The cost of EVERYTHING is going up.

 

Agree 100%, everything does start at home. I was raised in the 60's with family dinner every night. My wife and I raised our kids in the 80's and 90's with family dinner every night. Mcdonalds, Dairy Queen and the like we're a once a week every 2 week treat not like today where it's a lifestyle. And besides, it's way cheaper for a family to eat at home.

 

Bernie Sanders health care estimates are all self-calculated...

How does he calculate these estimates? Who knows?

 

EVERYTHING IN OUR HEALTHCARE IS GROSSLY OVERPRICED AND FAR FROM THE BEST the third leading cause of death in the USA is MEDICAL ERRORS!!!!

 

Yep. Plus, who doesnt like a bit of Maccas from time to time?

 

That Koch-Soros- funded thinktank is via Soros using the Clinton foundation to nationalise South Africas health system. They are implementing communism as I type.


How the Clintons are hiding their involvement in the NHI ... through iDSI. South Africa
https://www.idsihealth.org/who-we-are/idsi-board/

 

Finland: Government Collapses Over Universal Health Care Costs, #Bernie2020 Hardest Hit
Fuzzy Slippers | 3/10/2019 - 7:30pm
“Similar problems are bedeviling Sweden and Denmark, two other countries frequently held up as models to follow on health care”

 

M4A would reduce expenditures per person.

 

Look, you can sashay around with this study and that calculation to a fare-thee-well but you are still just ignoring, the elephants in the room, to wit

a. EVERY civilized country in the world has had one form or another of Medicare for All for decades now and

b. They all pay LOTS less than we do

We don't have to say how we're going to pay for it. We would SAVE money

Everything else is Male Bovine Feces unless you are going to argue that Britain, France,Germany etc, don't exist.

 

As I understand it.... medicare is the most cost effective medical care available
As such, if m4a increased expenses, it would be be because previously un covered people would now be covered.... or people received mor extensive coverage or care

Relative prices for hospital outpatient services were 293 percent of Medicare rates on average, far higher than the average relative price for inpatient care (204 percent of Medicare rates)
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3033.html

Re your note about the costs of medicare.... this could be attributed to
A larger covered pool, or people in the covered pool living longer, or similar medical cost inflation as happens in all aspects of medical care

 

How would you know you would SAVE money if you don't tell people how its paid for?

 

Sander's bill does exactly that.

 

The only person making that claim is Sanders with his own estimates. No one really knows for sure, and there is no concrete way of quantifying. The only thing we do know is that medical expenses has increased since the expansion of Medicare.

 

There are 2 types of people those that don't believe in Santa and Medicare for all supporters.

 

Read that article and it's some of the biggest BS I've ever read. The government shut down did have to do with health care but it was actually about the failure to reform the inequality of the the system and had little to do with cost deficits. This is just sad people actually believe this crap.

"Finland has a decentralized system of health and social welfare programs, where much of the administration is left to local municipalities. This arrangement has led to widespread geographic variation when it comes to quality and access to health care services.

The reform was meant to address these inequalities and reduce the growing cost of the country's health care system, which has come under increasing stress from an ageing population. It included centralization of the administration at a regional level."
https://www.politico.eu/article/finlands-government-collapses-over-failed-health-care-reform/

 

Are these federal taxpayers the same ones that provide a tax 40% deduction (individual and corporate) for private healthcare, what if that deduction was removed as that is a cost to Taxpayers. Are not we the consumers of the goods produced by these companies paying for the expenses borne by these companies such as thier employees healthcare? Progressive are told that an increase in taxes is just passed along to the consumer so does not that also apply to other expenses borne by that company?

I want to sell something to the retail market that is tax deductible too. My barber wants the price he charges for haircuts to be tax deductible so he can raise his price 25%.

 

It is paid by a supplemental income tax. Like what Johnson used to fund the vietnam war. Then corporations money that they spent on healthcare will now be profits that are taxed, the rest that is not taxed will be used for expansion (creating jobs and taxes) or returned to the shareholders and that is taxed. The thing is for the great majority of Americans their tax increase will be less than their present contribution out of thier wage benefit package.

 

Why would the tax increase be less than the presented contribution when the vast majority of the people who would benefit from said currently contribute nothing to tax reciepts? At least, not in any meaningful way to offset trasfer payments.

 

How are they paying for thier insurance now? And like I said it is a supplemental income tax like SS and medicare that the min wage workers pay at the same rate that I did while making 1.5 times the national family average of 58,000 a year. People get caught up in the method of collecting the money. We spend say 5 trill now, it does not go up because the person writing the checks changes. What getting the private insurance companies out of it takes the 25% of heath care dollars that they don't pass along to providers and give it to providers.

Whether your healthcare is paid for in a combination of increased prices due to corporate healthcare overhead and policy premiums and copays and deductibles or an income tax doesn't matter to the great majority of Americans, which is what the policies of the nation should be, policies that benefit the great majority of americans.

Now while a income tax is regressive in nature to the detriment of the top 10% investor class, they will also benefit from increased corporate profits and the businesses will be better positioned with foreign business that do not bear the costs of healthcare.