Urban Institute analysis of Sanders Single Payer Plan: May 2016

[JCanete]

96. So insurance as it stands, which is gouging the fuck out of people, and granted, often has massive

holes in coverage that hopefully get closed up by the medicare for all proposal, costs about 26.4 trillion to cover over 300 million people, or without doing more than a cursory analysis, that seems to be what I'm getting from that study. Extending coverage to another 27 million people is expected to cost another 6.6 trillion? I get that some of that money is accounting for transition costs(which btw, is money likely to be taxed again and again the more people that are getting a piece of that pie), and I expect that much of it is also accounting for those holes in coverage for the whole population, and I can appreciate that an analysis might say that that 6.6 trillion isn't enough. But it is an increase in spending on healthcare of 25 percent, so I don't see how that is actually doing healthcare on the cheap, or else, so is our current system with Obamacare, which must then have sacrificed one of the other two pillars.

If more money (6.6 trillion more than what we are spending now)means it is more likely that such a system can provide better coverage or be implemented faster than what we have today, then I'd say it is an improvement.

But do they even take into account cost leveraging for services that the government would have, or the reduced costs that preventative care versus emergency or post-illness care might proffer? Or the increased productivity of a healthy workforce that might translate into more taxes, more entrepreneurial competition, etc?