Medicare for All - 2023

Marianne Williamson was on Fox and pitching Universal Healthcare. Now I think Universal Healthcare would be a really good but I don't think we're being realistic about the cost.

Williamson's response to the inevitable question of how do we pay for this was that a University of Massachusetts study showed that we would save $5.1 trillion over 10 years in healthcare costs with Universal Healthcare.

We'll save money is really not a good answer. Who will save money? We would be shifting healthcare costs from employers and individuals to the government. In the long run that would probably be a good thing but people who are currently paying for health insurance aren't going to turn that money over to the government so that money has to be replaced somehow.

$5.1 trillion over 10 years is $510 billion per year which is less than what we're spending for Medicaid today. it certainly isn't going to cover healthcare for over 300 million people.

What we spend as of 2021: Medicare $901 billion, Medicaid $734 billion, Private Health Insurance Spending $1,211 billion, out of pocket $433 billion and other public health activity $596 billion. That's a total of almost $3.9 trillion.

The savings she's talking about, if the University of Massachusetts study is accurate, is about 13% of what we're spending. Then there's the question of would there be a larger demand for health services if they were free? Basic economic theory says that there would be and it would be foolish not to take that into account. Another problem is that our current medical infrastructure may be inadequate to handle the increased demand and some money needs to be allocated to shore that up as well.

She then went off about how no one asked how to pay for Afghanistan or Iraq which is true. But the fact that no one asked how to pay for Afghanistan and Iraq doesn't address the question of how to pay for Medicare for All. It just says that our priorities are screwed up. 

Then she started talking about fairer taxation for the rich including possibly a wealth tax Now, fairer taxation for the rich is at least addressing the question. Unfortunately the wealth tax is probably unconstitutional since it is neither an income tax nor a direct tax.