General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Urban Institute analysis of Sanders Single Payer Plan: May 2016 [View all]Me.
(35,454 posts)"The Sanders campaign and David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler reacted with sharp criticisms to our recent report, The Sanders Single-Payer Health Care Plan: The Effect on National Health Expenditures and Federal and Private Spending. In this brief, we discuss our key assumptions in these areas of disagreement and highlight ways in which we may have actually underestimated overall costs of the Sanders proposal. By and large our assumptions are laid out thoroughly in the original paper, but here we use them to address the specific statements made by the campaign.
Our analysis was based on detailed modeling of acute care for the nonelderly, acute care for the elderly, and long-term care services and supports. It is impossible to wholly impose a new health care system in the United States that changes the way all residents receive and finance their health care, even one that may be successful in another country, without disrupting many existing institutions, such as insurance companies, integrated health systems, hospitals, physicians, and pharmaceutical manufacturers. To be politically acceptable, compromises would have to be made, and those compromises are reflected in our assumptions.
In this brief, we discuss our key assumptions in these areas of disagreement and highlight ways in which we may have actually underestimated overall costs of the Sanders proposal. By and large our assumptions are laid out thoroughly in the original paper, but here we use them to address the specific statements made by the campaign and HW, and we provide additional reliable evidence to counter some of HWs claims.
The increases in federal spending that we estimated ($32 trillion between 2017 and 2026) are so large because all current public and private spending would be transferred to the federal government, benefits would be expanded, and out-of-pocket costs to consumers would be eliminated."...cont...for those who are interested....
https://www.urban.org/research/publication/response-criticisms-our-analysis-sanders-health-care-reform-plan