“Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’s healthcare plan has set off a fierce debate among economists about whether his numbers add up.”
“The question of how much Sanders’s proposals would cost has set off a “war of the wonks,” with liberal economists on the front lines.
Sanders’s plan already has essentially no chance of passing Congress, given that Republicans are expected to control at least one chamber in 2017, but there are questions about the policy as well as the politics.
The main challenge to Sanders’s math comes from Kenneth Thorpe, a well-respected health economist at Emory University who advised Vermont on its efforts to create a state-level single-payer system.
Thorpe says Sanders’s plan would cost about $1 trillion per year more than Sanders says it would: $2.5 trillion per year versus $1.38 trillion per year. The resulting funding shortfall would mean that Sanders would have to hike taxes even more to pay for his plan, he says.
Thorpe also argues that Sanders’s proposed 8.4 percent in extra payroll and income taxes would instead have to rise to a 20 percent combined extra tax.
Sanders argues that middle class families would save thousands of dollars under his proposal because they would no longer have to pay health insurance premiums. But the higher taxes envisioned under Thorpe’s analysis would flip the script for many people: He found that 71 percent of workers and their families currently with private insurance would end up paying more, not less, under Sanders’s plan.”
“ Much of the dispute among the experts, and the $1 trillion difference in cost estimates, centers on how much savings would be achieved from switching to a single-payer healthcare system.”
“ Companies that currently pay high health costs for their workers would see huge savings by no longer having to pay for healthcare, but smaller companies that don’t offer much coverage would now be hit with a new tax, said Henry Aaron, a health expert at the Brookings Institution.
“You are going to be spreading across the American industrial landscape huge amounts of income redistribution,” Aaron said.
Friedman contests this skepticism, saying other advanced countries with single-payer systems are able to provide good care at much lower costs.” - Debate rages over the cost of Bernie's government, the hill.com, 02/18/2016
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/269786-debate-rages-over-the-cost-of-bernies-government
Note: Regardless of the “expert” discussions/arguments above, there is only one single-payer system in the world and that is Canada. Multiple single-payer systems, which implicitly exist as an argument point above, do not in fact exist. For more information see link below associated with the post entitled ACA/Obamacare: How Universal is “Single Payer” Healthcare? Not Very!
http://thelastembassy.blogspot.com/2016/01/acaobamacare-how-universal-is-single.html
“WASHINGTON - Many health plans sold through Affordable Care Act marketplaces in 2015 are so limited that they don't offer patients access to some medical specialists such as endocrinologists, rheumatologists and psychiatrists, a study suggests.
That may be forcing some patients to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket for any care provided by these specialists.
"This translates into huge cost burdens for patients," said Stephen Dorner, lead author of the study, which was published by the Journal of the American Medical Association.”
“To test the extent of narrow networks, researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health looked at provider directories in a sampling of 135 Silver health plans being sold in the 34 states that relied on the federal HealthCare.gov marketplace in 2015.
They expected to find plans with only a handful of physicians in some specialties. Instead, they discovered that nearly 15 percent of the plans did not include a single in-network physician for at least one specialty.” - Some ACA Plans May Exclude Specialists, Study Finds, 10/28/2015, insurancenewsnet.com
Link to the entire article appears below:
https://insurancenewsnet.com/oarticle/2015/10/28/some-obamacare-plans-may-exclude-specialists-study-finds.html
‘Employer-based health insurance premiums climbed 4.2% this year for family plans, according to an annual Kaiser Family Foundation report. That's up from 3% the year before.
Since 2008, average family premiums have climbed a total of $4,865.
The White House cheered the news, saying it was a sign of continued slow growth in premium costs.
That much is true. Since 2006, the average annual increase for family plans at work has been 4.9%, down from around 10% a year from 1999-2005.
Slightly less higher premiums aren't what President Obama promised Americans when he ran for office touting his medical overhaul. He specifically said his plan would cut premiums.
"We will start," Obama said back in 2008, "by reducing premiums by as much as $2,500 per family."
That $2,500 figure was Obama's mantra on health care. You can watch the video if you don't believe it.
And Obama wasn't talking about government subsidized insurance or expanding Medicaid or anything like that. He specifically focused on employer provided health care.
For "people who already have insurance, and the employers who are providing it," he said at one campaign event, "we will work to lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family."‘ - Health Premiums Have Climbed $4,865 Since Obama Promised to Cut Them $2,500, IBD, 09/23/2015
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://news.investors.com/blogs-capital-hill/092315-772384-premiums-have-steadily-climbed-despite-obama-promise-to-cut-them.htm
