"Let me thank the Koch brothers, of all people, for sponsoring a study that shows that Medicare for all would save the American people $2 trillion over a 10-year period," Sanders said.

In the study, Blohous predicts Sanders's single-payer health-care plan would raise federal health-care spending by about $32.6 trillion between 2022 and 2031. Other economists noted in the same study, however, that federal health-care spending would drop overall by just more than $2 trillion.

Does Bernie even realize that Medicare only covers 80% of the costs so the actual cost would be $40 trillion when you add in that additional 20% that has to be covered?

Leave it to socialists to not even understand the actual costs of the program they want to implement

Let's not even mention the fact every other government program ends up plagued with extensive cost overruns and inefficiencies. Our public school system should sound the alarm bells for that one where we outspend nearly the entire OECD only for our test scores to lag developing countries.

We could send every kid in America to college.

Instead we fund the Department of Education.

Nah, you gotta take the L on this one, Ogie. You posted this study's findings last week acting like the number was astronomical, turns out we'd be SAVING money.

Thankfully we have Repbulicans now controlled every facet of government. We should see dramatic cut backs on govt any day now.

We should call the Koch brothers the T-Mobile brothers, because they're in the self-own business.

That astronomical number was for what Medicare would pay, which is 80% of the cost. If Sanders is going to use overall healthcare spending to try to spin this as a savings, then you need to add the 20% that would be out of pocket to the study's number as that is the true cost. Heck, that's assuming government is efficient and doesn't have any fraud, which we know won't be the case.

That is a valid point. I haven't seen numbers on how the remaining 20% of the costs compare to the total costs paid in premiums, co-pays and deductibles, all of which would be eliminated if the Sanders proposal passed.

I'm not against some sort of universal medical protection... in fact, I'm in favor of it, though I think I would prefer catastrophic coverage rather than full coverage. But there is no way it is somehow cheaper. We are going to have everyone in America with medical coverage run by the government. There is no way that saves money. It's impossible.

I don't believe this is the case. AFAICT Sanders' plan eliminates out of pocket co-pays in contrast to current Medicare and the Mercatus study accounts for this in projecting their scary federal spending numbers. The end result is still a plan with large savings compared to what we currently spend on healthcare, and that's even without getting into the likelihood of things like greater administrative savings than the study projects.

The only way you can believe it will be cheaper is that you have to admit the entire medical economic structure is artificial and a house of cards. Then you have to price fix it back to reality.

The reality is that the lobbyists of all the concerned parties like hospitals, doctors, all the admins and finally the lawyers would not go back to some lower non artificial level of economic life that is based on given the general population medical care.

Yes, we should do this.


Fuck 'em. What do they deserve?

Yes, we should do this.


Fuck 'em. What do they deserve?

Yes, we should do this.


Fuck 'em. What do they deserve?

Sounds like a good way to end up with a bunch of D students as doctors.

We need Big Pharma lobbyists to ensure well-educated doctors?

You need incentive for people to become doctors, despite what fairy tale world you live in.

Do you think most people become doctors for money?

Do you think most people become doctors for money?

You need incentive for people to become doctors, despite what fairy tale world you live in.

I don't think they dedicate ten years to med school and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their education to become Senior Nurses.

Doctors should be paid very well. But there's plenty of headroom to be paid a little less but still very well. Maybe we should have a system similar to France, where doctors make a little less but aren't gouged on med school tuition and left with years of crushing debt to pay. I dunno, don't wanna get called Croissant Curious Hair for that.

This is economics. We want the best and the brightest to become doctors. It's nice to say "fuck doctors", but once reality sets in, you'll realize you don't want Bert from the local watering hole performing your triple bypass surgery. We can act like money and economics shouldn't factor into these things, but they do.