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In reply to the discussion: The Urban Institute's Attack On Single Payer: Ridiculous Assumptions Yield Ridiculous Estimates [View all]Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)I mean, as long as we're just making up numbers.
http://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-wsj-18-trillion
"18 Trillion" is bullshit. If Government "pays" - or to be more precise, if everyone is put into a government managed non-profit single payer insurance pool, the money spent on for-profit insurance (including the 20% overhead added by the for-profit insurance industry) diminishes accordingly. The entire Gross National Product for 2017 was 17 Trillion Dollars. Health Care Spending was approx 3.4 Trillion. Moving everyone to a single-payer system would not magically increase the amounts spent on health care, because the net amount of health care required by people is not market-dependent, among other things. If anything, total HCS is likely to go down, because more people have access to preventative care. This, too, is one of the logical underpinnings of the ACA.
It is a disingenuous argument (to put it mildly) to play funny games with big, scary-sounding numbers as if a SPHC is going to "cost us way more". It's bullshit, and illogical. It's the same as saying "oh, it wouldn't be free, people would pay for it in taxes". Yes, but they wouldn't be paying outrageous premiums to for-profit insurance companies, would they.