Take it from an economist, Medicare for All is the most sensible way to fix health care

[Nanjeanne]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/04/08/medicare-for-all-reasonable-practical-health-care-reform-column/3393034002/

We all recognize that the status quo isn’t working. We spend more per person than any other country on health care, but we aren’t getting any bang for our buck. We have lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality rates and more preventable deaths, and too many personal bankruptcies are due at least in part to medical bills.

Where we disagree is the solution. The favorite new “reasonable” plan is “Medicare for America,” a bill from Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Rosa DeLauro that has won the support of big names like Texas presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke and the Center for American Progress, the left-of-center think tank where the plan originated as “Medicare Extra for All.” It has been extolled in opinion pieces for some of America’s largest newspapers as a “realistic” plan to fix what’s broken in our health care system.

snip

Time to get real. As an economist who has spent decades studying our health care system, I can tell you that Medicare for All advocates are the only ones who are being reasonable, because theirs is the only plan that will control health care costs while finally achieving universal coverage.

Insurance companies are middle men
The problem with incremental plans, whether they are public options, buy-ins to Medicare or Medicaid, or pumping more money into subsidies in the Affordable Care Act's individual marketplace, is that they preserve the private health insurance system weighing down our health care.

snip

If we’re talking about which health care reform plans are serious about attacking cost, providing universal coverage and making sure everyone has access to health care, Medicare for All is the only reasonable answer. No other plan does this effectively, which is why I suspect that the Center for American Progress has not come out with spending estimates. Basic economic tenets tell us that their plan will not reduce health care spending as effectively.

Is Medicare for All bold? Absolutely. Is it reasonable? You bet. It is time to accept that Medicare for All is the practical alternative.

Worth reading the whole article by Gerald Friedman, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

[LongtimeAZDem]

1. Because I always go to an economist when I'm sick

[Hassler]

2. +1

[Hoyt]

3. Agree with the economic aspects, but the economist must have missed out on political realities and

the millions of ignorant people who will never accept a government financed system with taxes replacing premiums, with resultant lower costs.

To get it done, we're likely going to have to go the Public Option route. Most folks will gravitate toward the Public Option quickly. Then, it'll be easy to convert the remaining fools.

[delisen]

4. Would medicare for all, mean less health care for those over 65?

I would think that that one unintended consequence would be that younger peoples health needs would be prioritized.

I think covering very rich younger people at the same premiums elderly now pay would decrease options for elderly.

[Nanjeanne]

6. Why? That makes no sense. If Medicare For All is funded by tax dollars - and the system is

all in - which means the shared cost has a much larger pool - especially more healthy people in the system - it makes the system more cost-effective. Right now, insurance companies are rationing care - but makes you think Medicare For All would give less healthcare for anyone over 65?

[delisen]

13. I think all programs set priorities.

I think there is an ongoing search for scapegoats in societies, and I have been noting considerable prejudice against older people.

Oder people do have as a group a different package of heath needs, as do children, as do you adults, and middle aged adults.

Whenever there are large scale changes, there is the opportunity for injustice and inequality and these are often fueled by prejudice.

I think it is immoral for us to not provide good healthcare for everyone in our society. I think that when persons cannot afford to pay for the fruits of the healthcare system we have built it needs to be provided to each person anyway because not only is it immoral to withhold it, it is an integral part of provide for the common good the well-fare of us all.

[elleng]

7. Oh right, because that's just what Medicare does.

[delisen]

11. There is not much to discuss if you respond only with sarcasm.

[Politicub]

10. How did you get that idea?

I'm not a supporter of Sanders' MFA approach (I prefer the Medicare for America system because it's a stepping stone to full coverage).

But are you saying that younger people who need health care should not have it because it may take healthcare from those over 65? It's not a zero sum game. The thing that will govern how much care you get will be availability of doctors to see you; not cost.

Means tested programs often get portrayed as welfare, which makes them easier to cut.

[delisen]

12. No I am not saying that younger people who need healthcare

should not have it because it may take healthcare way from those over 65 nor am I saying it is a zero sum game.

I am posing a question about unintended consequences and am aware that all too often large scale policy changes do not work out we expect.

I agree that means tested program are often portrayed as as "welfare" deliberately giving it a negative connotation based upon prejudice and that is used by people who aim to cut these benefits for selfish reasons.

[BlueFlorida]

5. Friedman is a Sanders' camp resident economist

He is not one of the the top economists and has not won a Nobel prize or anything.

His analysis has been thoroughly debunked before.

Top Democratic economists just launched a brutal attack on Bernie Sanders

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/18/top-democratic-economists-just-launched-a-blistering-attack-on-bernie-sanders/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1b525d7091c7

Gerald Friedman’s Analysis of the Sanders Spending Plan Just Took a Hit Below the Waterline

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/02/gerald-friedmans-analysis-sanders-spending-plan-just-took-hit-below-waterline/

From Bill Moyers' site:

The Sanders “Economic Plan” Controversy

https://billmoyers.com/story/the-sanders-economic-plan-controversy/

In what The New York Times calls a “careful forensic examination,” the University of California-Berkeley economists found Friedman’s mathematical assumptions faulty or, at the very least, at odds with “conventional economic thinking.” Get all the details at The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/27/upshot/uncovering-the-bad-math-or-logic-behind-bernie-sanderss-economic-plan.html

[Nanjeanne]

8. Oh for heaven's sake! So . . . any economist who has positive response to Sanders' proposals is a

hack? Quoting articles has nothing to do with Friedman's qualifications. Do I need to post articles that agree with him? This is silly.

Here's his background - he really is such a slacker.

Education:
Ph.D., Economics, Harvard University, 1986. Dissertation: Politics and Unions: Government, Ideology, and the Labor Movement in the United States and France, 1880-1914.
B.A., Economics and History, Columbia University, 1977

Professional Experience:
University of Massachusetts at Amherst: Department of Economics, September 1984-present
Tufts University: Department of Economics, Lecturer, September 1983-June 1984
Clark University: Department of Economics, Part-time Instructor, Spring 1983
International Ladies Garment Workers' Union: Research Assistant, June 1977-July 1978

Research Interests:
Economic History: 19th and 20th century United States
New World Slavery: 19th and 20th century France
Labor History: Europe and North America
Labor Economics
Political Economy
The Economics of Health Care

Honors and Awards:
German Marshall Fund of the United States Fellowship, 1989-90
Certificate of Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Harvard-Danforth Center for Teaching, Harvard University, 1981
Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude from Columbia University

Professional Activities:
Drafted financing plans for single-payer health care systems for Maryland, Massachusetts and the United States.
Associate Editor of Labor History 2003-present.
Member of the Editorial Board, The Journal of Economic History (September 1994 - 1998).
Member of the Editorial Board, The American Journal of Sociology (September 1995 - 1997).

Affiliations:
American Economic Association
Economic History Association
Labor and Working Class History Association
Social Science History Association
Society for French Historical Studies
Selected Publications:
Reigniting the Labor Movement: Restoring means to ends in a democratic Labor Movement (London and New York, Routledge, 2007).

State-Making and Labor Movements. The United States and France, 1876-1914 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1998).

"Success and Failure in Third Party Politics: The Knights of Labor and the Union Labor Coalition in Massachusetts, 1884-88" International Labor and Working Class History 62 (Fall 2002), 164-88.

"What is Wrong with Economics? And What will Make it Right?" Working USA (Fall 2000), 133-47.

"The Political Economy of Early Southern Unionism: Race, Politics, and Labor in the South, 1880-1953," Journal of Economic History 60 (June 2000), 384-413.

"New Estimates of United States Union Membership, 1880-1914," Historical Methods 32 (Spring 1999), 75-86.

"Revolutionary Syndicalism and French Labor: The Rebels Behind the Cause" French Historical Studies (Spring 1997).

"Worker Militancy and its Consequences: Political Responses to Labor Unrest in the United States, 1877-1914," International Labor and Working Class History (Fall 1991), 5-17.

"Capitalism, Socialism, Republicanism and the State: France 1877-1914" Social Science History 14:1 (Spring 1990), 151-74.

"The State and the Making of the Working Class, France and the United States 1880-1914," in Theory and Society (May 1988), 403-30.

"Strike Success and Union Ideology, the United States and France, 1880-1914," Journal of Economic History (March 1988), 1-25.

"The Heights of Slaves in Trinidad," Social Science History (November 1982), 482-515.

What a loser!!!!!!!

[BlueFlorida]

9. He works with Sanders' campaign

and is a supporter.

His math has been debunked as faulty at best to deliberate doctoring of numbers at worst.

This is not how science operates.