Democratic Primaries

How much would a “Medicare for all” plan, like the kind endorsed by the Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, change health spending in the United States?

Some advocates have said costs would actually be lower because of gains in efficiency and scale, while critics have predicted huge increases.

We asked a handful of economists and think tanks with a range of perspectives to estimate total American health care expenditures in 2019 under such a plan. In all of these estimates, patients and private insurers would spend far less, and the federal government would pay far more.But the overall changes are also important, and they’re larger than they may look. Even the difference between the most expensive estimate and the second-most expensive estimate was larger than the budget of most federal agencies.

Studies:

* Gerald Friedman, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, whose estimates were frequently cited by the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign in 2016.

* Charles Blahous, a senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and a former trustee of Medicare and Social Security.

* Analysts at the RAND Corporation, a global policy research group that has estimated the effects of several single-payer health care proposals.

*Kenneth E. Thorpe, the chairman of the health policy department at Emory University, who helped Vermont estimate the costs of a single-payer proposal there in 2006.

* Analysts at the Urban Institute, a Washington policy research group that frequently estimates the effects of health policy changes.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/10/upshot/medicare-for-all-bernie-sanders-cost-estimates.html?mtrref=cms.newsweek.com&assetType=REGIWALL&mtrref=www.newsweek.com&assetType=PAYWALL