Admits purposefully omitting cost details of plan because it would engender enormous debate
WASHINGTON D.C. (Texas Insider Report) What it will probably end up looking like is a payroll tax on employers an increase in income tax in a progressive way for ordinary (high-income earning) people with a significant deductible for low-income people who pay nothing for it said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) earlier this week while campaigning in New Hampshire specifying how he would pay for his Medicare for All program which critics have lambasted for its cost and impact on the federal budget.
When Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma commented on the issue in April she described the program as the biggest threat to the American health care system.
Her concerns echoed those of others who worried about the impact on existing health plans.
What were talking about is stripping people of their private health insurance forcing them into a government-run program she said.
Sanders is just one of many liberal-progressive Democrat presidential candidates to advance Medicare for All and other policies prompting more vigorous debate about socialism in the United States.
The proposal has received varying cost estimates from different organizations.
- According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget one Medicare for All proposal would cost about $28 trillion $32 trillion over a decade.
- The American Action Forum a conservative think tank estimated the Green New Deals provision for universal health care would cost $36 trillion with $260000 in cost per household.
- The Mercatus Institute typically perceived as leaning right on fiscal issues similarly predicted in 2018 that the cost would reach $32 trillion in 10 years but forsaw a scenario in which the nation could actually save more than $2 trillion on health expenditures.
- Mercatus also claimed that its studys author thought the assumptions showing cost-savings may be unreasonable.
An alternative scenario accounting for less effective cost controls would result in more than $3 trillion in additional costs.
Sanders and others have championed universal health care as a human rights issue -- citing the U.S.s high health care costs and lack of coverage compared to other industrialized nations.
