Fox and Friends Accidentally Revealed That Americans Support Bernie Sanders' 'Medicare for All' Plan

[Uncle Joe]

A new report from the Koch Brothers-funded Mercatus Center revealed that Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan would cost the federal government an additional $32.6 trillion over 10 years, but also managed to reveal that it’s cheaper than the current plan. To which Bernie said: Thanks!

Apparently caught up in the spirit of self-owning, Trump’s beloved TV show Fox and Friends asked the public if they believed the “benefits outweigh the costs”. They conveniently left out the facts about the plan saving the country money, but even so, the reaction was not what they were hoping for: 73 percent of people said yes.

(snip)

The report estimated that the national health expenditure – which is the grand total spent on healthcare by the federal government, states, business and individuals – would actually be lower with Sanders' plan. In fact, the Koch-funded study revealed it would save $2 trillion in ten years. In summary:

Fox and Friends left out critical information in an attempt at spreading propaganda, but the country still voted that it was worth it. Not only the country, but the people who watch or follow Fox and Friends. The poll meant to condemn Sanders' plan backfired and the internet loved it:

(snip)

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/08/fox-and-friends-accidentally-revealed-americans-su.html

[H2O Man]

1. Recommended.

Thanks for this!

[Uncle Joe]

33. Thank you H2O Man

[dae]

2. Hoisted on thier own petard.

[malaise]

3. K & R

[Uncle Joe]

34. ...

[MontanaMama]

4. Whoopsie!

Last edited Thu Aug 2, 2018, 01:11 PM - Edit history (1)

Faux has really been stepping on their own toes lately.

[lapucelle]

8. If you think this report expresses "truth", then prepare for the backlash

when the Kochs release ads saying "Medicare for all proponents accept the findings of our study, and our study also found that income taxes would need to more than double to pay for the Sanders plan".

Here's the abstract of the study's findings.

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 $326 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.

Because the devil is in the details, all the details should have been considered before the study's findings were accepted and gleefully touted.

[lapucelle]

5. The report also claims that implementation will require much higher income taxes.

The Urban Institute, which is left-of-center, also found that the Sanders plan would cost $32 trillion,” [Robert Graboyes, a senior research fellow and health care scholar at the Mercatus Center who read Blahous’s report] said, referring to the group's 2016 report concluding then-presidential-candidate Sanders’s plan would have increased federal expenditures by $32 trillion between 2017 and 2026.

But Graboyes warned that, according to the report, even doubling all currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections would be “insufficient” to finance the costs of Medicare-for-All.

“In individual states like California and Vermont, similar single-payer healthcare plans tanked because increasing taxes was too much of a gamble,” he said.

I hope that by touting this report, we are not actually playing into the Koch brothers' hands.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/32-trillion-price-tag-sanders-medicare-program-koch/story?id=56938226

[JCanete]

10. Oh jesus, really lapucelle? The report is probably bullshit, but the funny thing is it still shows

that We would save anywhere from 500 billion on health care to 2 trillion over the next ten years, and Sanders has pounced on that. I think people can understand that even if they are paying more income tax, they are paying less on insurance.


And no, we don't actually know why they tanked in Vermont or California. We know the public justification for not backing them. That isn't the same thing.

[lapucelle]

11. "We need to double income taxes to pay for it" is not a winning message.

It was unwise to embrace any part of this study. It gives it credibility, and the Kochs will use that credibility to their advantage. The last thing we need is a Koch-funded study framing the narrative about medicare for all.

[JCanete]

12. we don't have to frame it that way, and Fox did, and this was their result. Also,

no it wasn't unwise. I think we can easily make the case that the Koch study is an attempt at worst case...that it is propaganda, and even that is weak sauce given that the numbers are still favorable to the American public.

[lapucelle]

14. We will not frame it that way, but the opposition will.

How can we "easily make the case that the Koch study is propaganda" after we embraced some of its findings?

[JCanete]

15. Its a matter of how we say it. Even by the Koch's numbers this program is a win. Its easy. really.

[lapucelle]

31. What's "easy" about selling voters on a plan

that a think tank claims will double their income taxes, especially after seeming to agree with the findings of the think tank's study? Back peddling is never the best option.

The "easiest" thing would have been to consider all the findings of the study before validating it and publicizing it as "proving our point".

[Uncle Joe]

35. The "think tank" doesn't know how Medicare for All will be financed,

it never stated that all income taxes would be doubled, it only gave an "if" scenario

No doubt tax increases will based on income as one source of funding but to my knowledge there has been nothing specifically spelled out.

One thing I do know, three individuals own as much wealth as the bottom half of the nation, that's over 160 million Americans.

[lapucelle]

37. All the figures are hypothetical, including the one Sanders cited.

From the abstract:

Doubling all currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan

A WaPo opinion piece noted:

[T]he market-oriented Mercatus Center, which takes funding from the Kochs, has a new report out on the costs of the [Sanders's] pet project. Under certain assumptions, the report found, Medicare for All would reduce total U.S. health expenditures by about $2 trillion over a 10-year period.

snip=============================

Charles Blahous, the report's author, seems to be trying to meet leftists halfway — to show them how far they still have to go if they want to pass Medicare for All. Where he has to make assumptions, he is as generous as possible to the Sanders plan. He assumes, for example, that it would pay all providers at the current reimbursement rates set by Medicare, rather than by the higher rates that private insurers pay; that there would be substantial savings in administrative costs; and that Medicare can save lots of money on drug prices.

Having stacked the deck in favor of "M4A," as Sanders calls his proposal, [the study] then comes up with a price tag: By 2031, the federal government would be spending an additional $4.2 trillion a year. For reference, the amount is slightly more than the total the U.S. government expects to spend this year. Suddenly doubling the federal budget has happened once before in modern history: during World War II.

Medicare for All advocates will protest: Think of all the money that people wouldn't need to spend on premiums! But the advocates already face an uphill battle persuading people to give up their current insurance — which 70 percent of Americans say they're quite happy with, according to Gallup — for a massive Medicare expansion that might not suit them as well. The climb would be stiff indeed after people found out that their taxes were being doubled to pay for it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/have-free-marketers-and-the-far-left-finally-found-something-they-can-agree-on/2018/07/31/6d1436ce-9504-11e8-80e1-00e80e1fdf43_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3b2fe2a01fa2

https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/blahous-costs-medicare-mercatus-working-paper-v1_1.pdf

[demmiblue]

6. Ha, ha!

[ProfessorGAC]

7. The Offset Of Actual Coverage Costs Are Not Clarified. . .

. . .in any articles i've seen on the subject here, since this report first surfaced.

Taxes go up, individual premium costs go down. I haven't see that detailed in any of these write ups.

So, the net cost to the typical citizen may be close a wash.

[Uncle Joe]

36. Yes but I have no doubt the people hurting the most will come out ahead though.

One side effect will be the elimination of hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies based on medical bills, that should create major positive reverberations to the overall economy.

[babylonsister]

9. Love it! nt

[lagomorph777]

13. out-Fuxed

[Thrill]

16. Democrats need to stop running away from policies like this

And run on them

[CentralMass]

28. But Bernie supports it.

[enid602]

17. Putin

Putin must be resurrecting the Bern for the midterms.

[Submariner]

18. After seeing your GIF of Bernie I wondered if this could be his grandson

[link:

|

[PrairieBlueCat]

19. Actually

Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman first proposed Medicare for All, by a different name. Can we give credit to the right people, and not pretend Mr. Sanders invented every progressive idea?

[demmiblue]

20. Aww.. there, there.

[PrairieBlueCat]

22. Not a fan of truth or history, huh?

Keep feelin' that Bern!

[demmiblue]

24. Lol!

[PrairieBlueCat]

25. Feel the... truth!

https://www.trumanlibrary.org/anniversaries/healthprogram.htm

[demmiblue]

26. Keep kicking!

[George II]

23. John Dingell Sr., then John Dingell Jr., and then Debbie Dingell (Jr.'s wife)....

....have introduced Medicare for All (not necessarily under that name) every year going back to the early 1940s.

[lapucelle]

32. And Conyers's HR 676 Medicare For All bill has been introduced

in almost every session of Congress since 2003. (He deferred to President Obama's efforts in 2009), and it's STILL the gold standard legislative plan. There is no Senate version.

http://www.medicareforall.org/pages/HR676

http://www.medicareforall.org/pages/S1804

[Voltaire2]

38. He never claimed to have invented it.

But I'm glad you agree that this is a core Democratic Party program, that mainstream Democrats have supported Medicare for All for more than 70 years.

[George II]

21. I don't think it was accidental.

[saidsimplesimon]

27. "Medicare for All"

is a winner if you ask those struggling with marginal health care and prescription coverage, or no coverage at all, regardless of party.

To those that think Senator Sanders invented the idea, I say, they are woefully ignorant of history. (not you Joe, you know who)

[NCTraveler]

29. Not sure this was a mistake.

Might seem so to the political neophyte.

[Omaha Steve]

30. Great press from Fox?

Even a broken clock is right twice in 24 hours.