Bernie Sanders Is Right: 'Medicare For All' Is Best For US Scientific Studies Confirms

[mucifer]

It turns out Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, the frontrunner among the Democratic Party's presidential candidates, is quite correct when he claims, "The most cost-effective and popular solution to this health care crisis is to guarantee health care as a right through a Medicare for All single-payer health care system."

A new and comprehensive systemic review analyzing 22 single-payer plans over the past 30 years published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal, PLOS Medicine, "found a high degree of analytic consensus for the fiscal feasibility of a single-payer approach in the U.S."

The study carries the title, "Projected costs of single-payer healthcare financing in the United States: A systematic review of economic analyses."

https://www.ibtimes.com/bernie-sanders-right-medicare-all-best-us-scientific-studies-confirm-2928496

Link to the study:
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003013#abstract0

[evertonfc]

1. probably

but with only 14 Democrats in Senate that support it , it will not become reality

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Empty qualifiers "right" and "best" - How would we know? It's all conjecture and opinion. /nt

[mr_lebowski]

3. There are certain metrics that can be deployed wherein 'higher numbers'

are considered reflective of what's 'right' or 'best'.

Higher rates or units of energy produced from a solar panel (per unit of energy input) ... is considered 'better'.

Just as for-example.

We do a lot of assessments in similar fashion.

[mucifer]

4. Peer reviewed scientific journal is NOT conjecture and opinion

[bucolic_frolic]

8. It's not scientific unless it's double blind in controlled conditions

and that's not something you can do with public policy. The best you can do is cost-benefit analysis.

And 'right' and 'best' are marketing hype, just like Trump

[thesquanderer]

11. re: "It's not scientific unless it's double blind in controlled conditions"

Detouring from the conversation at hand...

That's not true... the criteria for one kind of analysis can't be applied to all. There's all kinds of "scientific" things we know that are not the result of double blind studies. The statistical polling talked about all the time here is scientific, but there are no "double blind polls." There are all kinds of things we know through logical/mathematical proof. There are observational studies. Tons of stuff can be scientifically determined without double blind or controls.

[Poeraria]

5. Same can be said for Kale and Low fat diet.

Even if its good for you, lots just don't want it.

[uponit7771]

6. Sanders way of paying for it does not add up his claim of 20 million new jobs is not realistic

[Gothmog]

7. Societal Savings are not tax revenues and cannot be sued to pay for this program

Such a plan in theory may generate societal savings but such savings would not pay for a program. Governments can only spend tax revenues and/or borrowings. This study does not say how one would pay for such a program in the real world. I note that Prof. Krugman like the concepts of such a plan in theory but notes that taxes will have to be raised a great deal to pay for such a plan
Back in 2016, here is his position Prof. Krugman compares Sanders hoped for health care savings to the GOP tax cuts. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/19/weakened-at-bernies/?_r=0

On health care: leave on one side the virtual impossibility of achieving single-payer. Beyond the politics, the Sanders “plan” isn’t just lacking in detail; as Ezra Klein notes, it both promises more comprehensive coverage than Medicare or for that matter single-payer systems in other countries, and assumes huge cost savings that are at best unlikely given that kind of generosity. This lets Sanders claim that he could make it work with much lower middle-class taxes than would probably be needed in practice.

To be harsh but accurate: the Sanders health plan looks a little bit like a standard Republican tax-cut plan, which relies on fantasies about huge supply-side effects to make the numbers supposedly add up. Only a little bit: after all, this is a plan seeking to provide health care, not lavish windfalls on the rich — and single-payer really does save money, whereas there’s no evidence that tax cuts deliver growth. Still, it’s not the kind of brave truth-telling the Sanders campaign pitch might have led you to expect.

Today, Prof. Krugman says that such a plan is feasible if you are willing to pay a great deal more in taxes
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/paul-krugman-explains-why-single-payer-health-care-entirely-achievable-us-and-how

If we went to government provision of all insurance, we’d pay more in taxes but less in premiums, and the overall burden of health spending would probably fall, because single-payer systems tend to be cheaper than market-based."

The amount of higher taxes are not quantified in this article by Krugman. To pay for any such plan will require massive tax hikes

Again sanders has utterly failed in his attempts to get Vermont to adopt his magical single payer plan because the state of Vermont cannot use hypothetical societal saving to pay for this plan. Even Krugman admits that much higher taxes are needed

[George II]

9. How can they analyze the costs when the person that created it doesn't know how much it will cost?