Quote (Thor123422 @ Nov 12 2019 06:51am)
Only requires a leap of faith if you ignore estimates from even the most conservative groups that say it would save a trillion over 10 years. With a national system we can quibble about what style would be best but we can be very certain at this point that just about any system is better than what we have now.
This is what was included in the study you are referring to:
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The leading current bill to establish single-payer health insurance, the Medicare for All Act (M4A), would, under conservative estimates, increase federal budget commitments by approximately $32.6 trillion during its first 10 years of full implementation (2022–2031), assuming enactment in 2018. This projected increase in federal healthcare commitments would equal approximately 10.7 percent of GDP in 2022, rising to nearly 12.7 percent of GDP in 2031 and further thereafter. Doubling all currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan
It is likely that the actual cost of M4A would be substantially greater than these estimates, which assume significant administrative and drug cost savings under the plan, and also assume that healthcare providers operating under M4A will be reimbursed at rates more than 40 percent lower than those currently paid by private health insurance.
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Again,this is an aggressive estimate of administrative savings that is more likely to lead to M4A costs being underestimated than overestimated.
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Current administrative cost rates for Medicare as a whole are cited as being roughly 4
percent, though closer to 6 percent for Medicare Advantage.38 It is unlikely that the population
now privately insured could be covered by M4A with administrative costs as low as 4 percent.
Administrative cost rates are calculated as a percentage of total insurance costs, and these total
costs per capita under private insurance are currently less than half of what they are in
Medicare.39 In other words, one reason Medicare’s administrative cost rates appear to be so
much lower than private insurance rates is that they are expressed as percentages of Medicare’s
overall per capita costs, which are much higher
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Moreover, even if administrative cost rates could be lowered by more than seven percentage points, there would be offsetting cost increases. A further reason private insurance
administrative costs are relatively higher is the necessity of policing fraudulent or other improper payments to ensure an insurer’s continued solvency and to provide competitive value to its customers.
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Beyond this, other policy and political dynamics of federally administered insurance should tend to increase total costs. This is evident in the text of the M4A bill, which, among its
other provisions, includes a line item authorizing expenditures of up to 1 percent of the total national health budget during its first five years for “programs providing assistance to workers
who perform functions in the administration of the health insurance system and who may experience economic dislocation as a result of the implementation of this Act.”42 The policy and
political dynamics that gave rise to this proposed spending program would likely give rise to others in the course of enacting and implementing M4A, reducing net savings from lowered administrative costs.
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One striking finding evident in the table is that, even under the assumption that provider payments for treating patients now covered by private insurance are reduced by over 40 percent, aggregate health
expenditures remain virtually unchanged: national personal healthcare costs decrease by less than 2 percent, while total health expenditures decrease by only 4 percent, even after assuming
substantial administrative cost savings. The additional healthcare demand that arises from eliminating copayments, providing additional categories of benefits, and covering the currently
uninsured nearly offsets potential savings associated with cutting provider payments and achieving lower drug costs. Thus, the essential expenditure change wrought by movement to a
single-payer system would be to replace private spending on healthcare with government spending financed by taxpayers.46 At the same time, more generous healthcare insurance would
be provided to everyone at the expense of healthcare providers, who would face reimbursements substantially below their service costs. As noted previously, whether providers could sustain
such losses and remain in operation, and how those who continue operations would adapt to such dramatic payment reductions, are critically important questions.
While these estimates show little net change in NHE, the same cannot be said of the projected effects on the federal budget. Table 2 includes an estimate for the net increase in federal health budget commitments of $32.6 trillion from 2022 through 2031, which, by itself, is more than all federal individual and corporate income taxes projected to be collected during that time period.
So yes if you assume its perfectly successful according to plan, use a very conservative estimate of government spending whom we know have a reputation for spending going way over budget, and ignore the effects of what actually happens when you slash payment by 40% you can come up with a 'savings' of 1 trillion over 10 years!
And its even a conservative group saying it!
Bulletproof plan that everyone should support and not question! Silly freedom loving plebs!
This post was edited by cambovenzi on Nov 12 2019 05:17am