What liberals aren't telling you about single-payer
- Thread starter Legion
- Start date
Can liberals name a country where "free" healthcare hasn't resulted in rationing?
It’s begun. We’re having a debate over socialism. Not over whether it’s fair to call DEMOCRATS socialists. Not over whether socialism has been good for Venezuela or some other faraway, unfortunate country. But no-kidding socialist policies right here in the United States.
The press attention to a new study of the costs of Medicare for All, universal health coverage paid for by the government, is a sign that it is a live issue.
Popularized by socialist Bernie Sanders, Medicare for All is a plank of the DEMOCRAT Party platform. A raft of DEMOCRAT candidates have endorsed the policy, while about a third of DEMOCRAT members of the House have joined a caucus devoted to it.
The bad news is that Medicare for All is a completely batty idea.
The new study of its costs, from the Mercatus Center, concludes that Medicare for All would increase federal spending by almost $33 trillion during the first 10 years. To put it in non-technical terms: That’s a lot. The study notes that “it would be less expensive to the federal government to triple all projected appropriations,” and that “doubling up all currently projected federal individual and corporate income-tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan.”
Supporters of the idea impeached the credibility of the findings based on their source, yet a study by the centrist Urban Institute in 2016 found exactly the same thing.
Medicare for All purports to save on overall health care spending by ratcheting down payments to health care providers. Medicare does indeed pay less to hospitals than private insurers, but it’s not clear this would be sustainable if hospitals could only count on Medicare-level payments.
Since Medicare for All would eliminate insurance premiums and provide health care for free, it would create an incentive for more usage, and more health care expenditures.
All of this is why the natural gravity in a single-payer system is toward brute-force price controls and rationing to control costs.
Obama had to promise that if you like your health care you can keep it. Medicare for All would replace the employer-based system entirely for more 150 million people. It wouldn’t matter how much they liked their insurance — it would be gone.
https://nypost.com/2018/07/30/like-it-or-not-america-is-now-seriously-debating-socialism/
It’s begun. We’re having a debate over socialism. Not over whether it’s fair to call DEMOCRATS socialists. Not over whether socialism has been good for Venezuela or some other faraway, unfortunate country. But no-kidding socialist policies right here in the United States.
The press attention to a new study of the costs of Medicare for All, universal health coverage paid for by the government, is a sign that it is a live issue.
Popularized by socialist Bernie Sanders, Medicare for All is a plank of the DEMOCRAT Party platform. A raft of DEMOCRAT candidates have endorsed the policy, while about a third of DEMOCRAT members of the House have joined a caucus devoted to it.
The bad news is that Medicare for All is a completely batty idea.
The new study of its costs, from the Mercatus Center, concludes that Medicare for All would increase federal spending by almost $33 trillion during the first 10 years. To put it in non-technical terms: That’s a lot. The study notes that “it would be less expensive to the federal government to triple all projected appropriations,” and that “doubling up all currently projected federal individual and corporate income-tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan.”
Supporters of the idea impeached the credibility of the findings based on their source, yet a study by the centrist Urban Institute in 2016 found exactly the same thing.
- Vermont, the home of Sen. Sanders, abandoned a single-payer proposal after the DEMOCRAT governor concluded that it wasn’t fiscally sustainable.
- Despite its DEMOCRAT super-majorities, California gave up on a single-payer proposal last year for the same reason — the projected cost was twice as much as the state budget.
Medicare for All purports to save on overall health care spending by ratcheting down payments to health care providers. Medicare does indeed pay less to hospitals than private insurers, but it’s not clear this would be sustainable if hospitals could only count on Medicare-level payments.
Since Medicare for All would eliminate insurance premiums and provide health care for free, it would create an incentive for more usage, and more health care expenditures.
All of this is why the natural gravity in a single-payer system is toward brute-force price controls and rationing to control costs.
Obama had to promise that if you like your health care you can keep it. Medicare for All would replace the employer-based system entirely for more 150 million people. It wouldn’t matter how much they liked their insurance — it would be gone.
https://nypost.com/2018/07/30/like-it-or-not-america-is-now-seriously-debating-socialism/
Average Canadian family paying $12K for public health care every year. “Free"?
Though Canadians love to brag about our "free" health care, we also know it’s not really free; we pay for it in taxes. Now, a new analysis has put a dollar figure on just how much of our money is going to health care.
A new analysis from the Fraser Institute finds that a typical Canadian family of four will pay $12,935 for health care in 2018. The average single Canadian adult will pay $4,640.
Most Canadians are not really sure how much our public health care system costs each of us, since we typically never see a bill from the doctor or hospital visits we make and there is no specific "health care" tax.
But the Fraser Institute came up with its figures by looking at data from various Statistics Canada studies as well from reserach from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
They say the average Canadian family with two parents and two children will have a household income of $138,008 in 2018 and will pay more than $55,000 in taxes. Of that, $12,935 will go to public health care.
The average single adult makes $44,348 and pays $19,759 in taxes, with $4,640 going to health care insurance.
The Fraser Institute widely defines taxes, including property taxes, Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance premiums, as well as motor vehicle license fees "and a host of other levies" in its calculation. It calculates the health-care proportion of taxes paid per family to be the same proportion of tax revenues spent by the government on health care, it says in its report.
Those costs are up significantly from a decade or two ago.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/health/average-canadian-family-paying-more-than-12k-to-fund-public-health-care-study-1.4034416
Though Canadians love to brag about our "free" health care, we also know it’s not really free; we pay for it in taxes. Now, a new analysis has put a dollar figure on just how much of our money is going to health care.
A new analysis from the Fraser Institute finds that a typical Canadian family of four will pay $12,935 for health care in 2018. The average single Canadian adult will pay $4,640.
Most Canadians are not really sure how much our public health care system costs each of us, since we typically never see a bill from the doctor or hospital visits we make and there is no specific "health care" tax.
But the Fraser Institute came up with its figures by looking at data from various Statistics Canada studies as well from reserach from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
They say the average Canadian family with two parents and two children will have a household income of $138,008 in 2018 and will pay more than $55,000 in taxes. Of that, $12,935 will go to public health care.
The average single adult makes $44,348 and pays $19,759 in taxes, with $4,640 going to health care insurance.
The Fraser Institute widely defines taxes, including property taxes, Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance premiums, as well as motor vehicle license fees "and a host of other levies" in its calculation. It calculates the health-care proportion of taxes paid per family to be the same proportion of tax revenues spent by the government on health care, it says in its report.
Those costs are up significantly from a decade or two ago.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/health/average-canadian-family-paying-more-than-12k-to-fund-public-health-care-study-1.4034416
Move over, Crazy Bernie, you’re no longer the left’s heartthrob. You’ve been replaced by "She Guevara" AKA Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an out-of-the-closet socialist from New York City who will enter Congress next January after beating a member of the DEMOCRAT leadership.
Ocasio-Cortez wants a radical expansion in the size of the federal government. She has no idea how to pay for it.
She was asked how she intends to pay for her DEMOCRAT Socialism-friendly policies, including her Medicare for All agenda. “If people pay their fair share,” Ocasio-Cortez responded, “if corporations paid — if we reverse the tax bill, raised our corporate tax rate to 28 percent … if we do those two things and also close some of those loopholes, that’s $2 trillion right there. That’s $2 trillion in ten years.”
She should probably confer with DEMOCRAT Socialist-in-arms Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., whose most optimistic projections ($1.38 trillion per year) place the cost of Medicare for All at roughly $14 trillion over a ten-year period. Two trillion in ten years obviously puts Ocasio-Cortez a long way away from realistically financing a Medicare for All program, which is why she also proposes carbon taxes. How much she expects to raise from this tax she didn’t say.
https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/danieljmitchell/2018/07/30/rich-nations-that-enact-big-government-dont-remain-rich-n2505088
Ocasio-Cortez wants a radical expansion in the size of the federal government. She has no idea how to pay for it.
She was asked how she intends to pay for her DEMOCRAT Socialism-friendly policies, including her Medicare for All agenda. “If people pay their fair share,” Ocasio-Cortez responded, “if corporations paid — if we reverse the tax bill, raised our corporate tax rate to 28 percent … if we do those two things and also close some of those loopholes, that’s $2 trillion right there. That’s $2 trillion in ten years.”
She should probably confer with DEMOCRAT Socialist-in-arms Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., whose most optimistic projections ($1.38 trillion per year) place the cost of Medicare for All at roughly $14 trillion over a ten-year period. Two trillion in ten years obviously puts Ocasio-Cortez a long way away from realistically financing a Medicare for All program, which is why she also proposes carbon taxes. How much she expects to raise from this tax she didn’t say.
https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/danieljmitchell/2018/07/30/rich-nations-that-enact-big-government-dont-remain-rich-n2505088
canceled.2021.2
#SEEYOUINCOURT
hvilleherb
Verified User
And now Democrats are all giddy because some liberal think tank said Bernie's plan would save trillions of dollars. There are 2 threads on it already.
canceled.2021.2
#SEEYOUINCOURT
I didn’t watch it but I have never heard him call for the gobblement to take over the means of production
Cool story, bro.
something that all libs gloss over as well is that your killing an entire industry when you go single payer. Thats a lot of people without jobs. Sanders and others gloss over it by saying they will be employed in the health industry when in reality the skill set of administrators and health care providers is vastly different.
It might not be an exageration to say that single payer could trigger a recession
It might not be an exageration to say that single payer could trigger a recession
That only leaves a deficit of around $30 trillion or so in the first 10 years. How's that going to be paid for?
Liberals will claim it saves money. Here's what they won't tell you
A bill that would establish a single-payer health system in New York is financially feasible if assumptions that range from the questionable to the improbable take place, according to a study unveiled Wednesday.
The New York Health Act would provide universal insurance coverage with no copays, deductibles or premiums for all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status, and would lead to higher utilization, according to the report.
The paper, which the RAND Corp. compiled upon a commission from the New York State Health Foundation, shows several caveats that could bog down any effort to pass and implement single-payer in New York, particularly if Republicans continue to wield power in Albany and Washington.
First, the Trump administration would have to grant a precedent-shattering federal waiver to redirect all federal, state and Obamacare funds used for Medicaid, Medicare and marketplace tax credits to the New York Health Act.
Last week, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma called California’s pursuit of single-payer health care “unworkable” and indicated similar waivers would not be approved.
Beyond redirecting the existing revenue streams, the New York Health Act calls for $139 billion in new state tax revenue by 2022 — 156 percent more than what the state currently collects — through income and payroll taxes on both employers and individuals.
Low-income people who currently receive Medicaid would pay more because their taxes would increase.
RAND’s report uses one possible tax schedule that would meet the program’s financing needs: households reporting $27,500 or less would be taxed 6.1 percent of their payroll and 6.2 percent of non-payroll income, such as pensions; households reporting between $27,501 and $141,200 would be taxed 12.2 percent of their payroll and 12.4 percent of non-payroll income; and households reporting $141,200 or more would be taxed 18.3 percent of their payroll and 18.6 percent of non-payroll income.
A household reporting $150,000 in income would see its state tax rate increase from 6.45 percent to 18.3 percent.
“If only a small percentage of the highest-income residents found ways to avoid taxes, the schedule would need to be reworked, potentially increasing the burden on middle- and lower-income residents,” a research brief accompanying the study stated.
All New Yorkers would be forcibly enrolled in the plan, meaning companies with New York-based workers would be required to drop their employer-provided health insurance and instead pay 80 percent of the payroll tax, with employees picking up the other 20 percent.
There is little doubt that employers or at least some employer group would challenge this law arguing it is preempted by ERISA, the federal statute that governs employee benefits, including health insurance.
Courts have ruled that ERISA supersedes state law.
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2018/08/01/rand-study-finds-single-payer-viable-in-new-york-but-with-big-caveats-536072
A bill that would establish a single-payer health system in New York is financially feasible if assumptions that range from the questionable to the improbable take place, according to a study unveiled Wednesday.
The New York Health Act would provide universal insurance coverage with no copays, deductibles or premiums for all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status, and would lead to higher utilization, according to the report.
The paper, which the RAND Corp. compiled upon a commission from the New York State Health Foundation, shows several caveats that could bog down any effort to pass and implement single-payer in New York, particularly if Republicans continue to wield power in Albany and Washington.
First, the Trump administration would have to grant a precedent-shattering federal waiver to redirect all federal, state and Obamacare funds used for Medicaid, Medicare and marketplace tax credits to the New York Health Act.
Last week, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma called California’s pursuit of single-payer health care “unworkable” and indicated similar waivers would not be approved.
Beyond redirecting the existing revenue streams, the New York Health Act calls for $139 billion in new state tax revenue by 2022 — 156 percent more than what the state currently collects — through income and payroll taxes on both employers and individuals.
Low-income people who currently receive Medicaid would pay more because their taxes would increase.
RAND’s report uses one possible tax schedule that would meet the program’s financing needs: households reporting $27,500 or less would be taxed 6.1 percent of their payroll and 6.2 percent of non-payroll income, such as pensions; households reporting between $27,501 and $141,200 would be taxed 12.2 percent of their payroll and 12.4 percent of non-payroll income; and households reporting $141,200 or more would be taxed 18.3 percent of their payroll and 18.6 percent of non-payroll income.
A household reporting $150,000 in income would see its state tax rate increase from 6.45 percent to 18.3 percent.
“If only a small percentage of the highest-income residents found ways to avoid taxes, the schedule would need to be reworked, potentially increasing the burden on middle- and lower-income residents,” a research brief accompanying the study stated.
All New Yorkers would be forcibly enrolled in the plan, meaning companies with New York-based workers would be required to drop their employer-provided health insurance and instead pay 80 percent of the payroll tax, with employees picking up the other 20 percent.
There is little doubt that employers or at least some employer group would challenge this law arguing it is preempted by ERISA, the federal statute that governs employee benefits, including health insurance.
Courts have ruled that ERISA supersedes state law.
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2018/08/01/rand-study-finds-single-payer-viable-in-new-york-but-with-big-caveats-536072
