The eye-popping cost of Medicare for All

[dpibel]

97. This is pretty wild

If you were to actually follow the first link in the quoted material--which goes to the abstract of the actual Urban Institute study, you would find these words:

"The analysis demonstrates that there is more than one effective approach to achieving universal health care coverage in the United States and highlights the trade-offs of different reform strategies."

IOW, the actual study on which this Atlantic screed purports to be base, seems not to find the same catastrophe that the Atlantic author does.

(Side note: Am I alone in thinking that the Atlantic is not my go-to source for progressive analysis?)

The Urban Institute abstract has this to say about the plan that results in that scary $34 trillion number:

"Coverage and costs:
"This reform option covers the entire US population. National spending on health care would grow by about $720 billion in 2020. Federal government spending would increase by $2.8 trillion in 2020, or $34.0 trillion over 10 years."

Here's the key thing: Yes, the federal government would spend a lot more, because it would be paying the entirety of the current $3.5 trillion a year, instead of something like half that. But national spending, i.e. the aggregate of what the government spends and private spending (be it insurance premiums, co-pays, out of pocket, or whatever) would increase by $720 billion a year.

Now that's not chump change, but it is in the range of what you could get with a wealth tax, with realistic military spending, eliminating insurance company profits, and, yes, the (often deemed chimerical) savings from having a healthier population.

No, I haven't read the whole Urban Institute report. I have no reason, however, to believe that their abstract significantly misrepresents the report.

And it does not appear to me to be a statement that MFA is unicorns and rainbows.