Medicare for All Fact Check From Hell Persists as Sanders Rebukes CNN for Putting 'Blind Faith' in
in Right-Wing Economist
(snip)
Pointing to the table in the Mercatus Center analysis that shows Medicare for All would save the American people $2 trillion over ten yearswhile also providing healthcare for everyoneSanders accused CNN and other corporate media outlets of putting "blind faith" in Chuck Blahous, the right-wing author of the Mercatus study who deceptively insists that his numbers are being taken out of context.
"What Tapper and others have done is say we're wrong because Blahous didn't actually intend to find that Medicare for All would be a great deal for Americans," Sanders noted in a series of tweets. "The problem is: Blahous did find it would save $2 trillionhe just doesn't like that people are celebrating it."
Among the articles Tapper linked to was a "fact check" by the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, which had to be corrected multiple times after People's Policy Project founder Matt Bruenig highlighted the number of blatant factual mistakes it contained.
"They are all wrong," Bruenig wrote of the self-proclaimed fact-checkers Tapper cited. "Jake, to talk about the fact-checkers as if they are separate evaluations is nonsense. Each one of them got the same spin from the same Mercatus author who has been doing intentional outreach to get people like you to say this stuff. It's the same poisoned source."
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/08/20/medicare-all-fact-check-hell-persists-sanders-rebukes-cnn-putting-blind-faith-right
underpants
(182,877 posts)Sanders pointed to the analysis to say he was right then questioned the analysis?
The author himself is questioning his own analysis too?
Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)dollars in savings to the American People over a ten year period.
Of course Blahous of the Koch funded Mercatus Center wasn't happy with those results so he created a second alternate reality scenario NOT based on Bernie's actual bill.
When Bernie rightfully cited the savings that the report reflects within his bill, Blahous falsely stated that Bernie's was basically cherry picking just because Bernie didn't cite the author's findings in the alternate reality world of NOT Bernie's bill.
Some fact checkers kneejerked with Blahous' lies at worst and misunderstanding at best to claim that Bernie was being disingenuous for not citing Blahous' assumption (s) that wasn't based on the actual bill sponsored by Bernie aka; Medicare for All.
So Blahous and the fact checkers changed the frame of the report by Koch Brothers funded Mercatus Center which in truth actually cites Medicare for All as saving the American People over two trillion dollars over a ten year period to Bernie was "cherry picking" or telling a half truth.
Why on earth should Bernie be citing a segment of the report by a natural antagonist that isn't even based on Bernie's bill?
underpants
(182,877 posts)I've got it now. Thank you for the full explanation
dansolo
(5,376 posts)You keep claiming, over and over, that Blahous has "changed the frame of the report". That is a lie. His paper gave an estimate based on the legislative text, but he clearly stated that the estimate may not be a true representation of the actual costs. You may disagree with his assessment, but his assessment of possible issues is perfectly valid, because the bill isn't even in it's final form.
From the actual paper:
"It is likely that the actual cost of M4A would be substantially greater than has been
estimated from its legislative text. That text specifies that healthcare providers including
hospitals, physicians, and others will be reimbursed for all patients at Medicare payment rates,
which are projected to be roughly 40 percent lower than those paid by private insurers during
the first 10 years of M4As proposed implementation.4 By assuming these payment reductions
will be implemented and sustained, these cost estimates essentially represent a lower bound."
Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)The Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a libertarian think tank partially funded by the Koch brothers, appears to be mighty embarrassed about its finding in a recent paper that the Medicare for All proposal from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) might actually reduce Americans overall spending on healthcare.
We know this because Mercatus has sent out several emails pushing back against reports about the finding. And the papers author, Mercatus fellow Charles Blahous, took to the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal to complain that some have seized on a scenario in my estimates showing a slight decline in projected total public and private health expenditures under Medicare for All.
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The problem with Blahous complaint, as it happens, is that he actually did find that the Sanders plan could reduce overall healthcare costs. That conclusion is right there on page 18 of his 24-page paper. Under the assumptions in the Sanders plan, he writes, aggregate health expenditures remain virtually unchanged: national personal healthcare costs decrease by less than 2%, while total health expenditures decrease by only 4%, even after assuming substantial administrative cost savings.
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The AP, for instance, says Sanders scenario in which hospitals and doctors accept significantly lower payments for many patients is a big asterisk, and one that Sanders fails to disclose. Its a little odd to claim that Sanders fails to disclose his reliance on lower payments for providers since its explicitly part of his plan and was penciled out by Blahous. Did AP even read the plan, or just the tweet?
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http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-blahous-sanders-20180822-story.html#
RussBLib
(9,035 posts)I am still confused also.