The attack on Bernie Sanders’ single-payer plan is 'ridiculous'
The Urban Institute and the Tax Policy Center have released an analysis of the costs of Bernie Sanders' domestic policy proposals, including single-payer national health insurance.They claim that proposals would raise the federal deficit by $18 trillion over the next decade.
We won't address all of the issues covered in these analyses, just single payer, Medicare-for-all. To put it bluntly, the estimates are ridiculous. They posit outlandish increases in the utilization of medical care, and ignore vast savings under single-payer reform, and ignore the extensive and well documented experience with single-payer systems in other nations — which all spend far less per person on health care than we do.
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1. Administrative savings - insurance:
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However, Sen. Sanders' proposal would exclude these for-profit insurers, and instead build on the traditional Medicare program, whose overhead is less than 3 percent. Moreover, even this 3-percent figure is probably too high, since Sanders' plan would simplify hospital payment by funding them through global budgets (similar to the way fire departments are paid), rather than the current patient-by-patient payments. Hence a more realistic estimate would assume that insurance overhead would drop to Canada's level of about 1.8 percent. Cutting insurance overhead to 2 percent (rather than the 6 percent that the analysis posits) would save an additional $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years.
2. Administrative savings - hospitals:
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These provider savings on paperwork would, in fact, be even larger than the savings on insurance overhead. At present, U.S. hospitals spend one-quarter of their total budgets on billing and administration, more than twice as much as hospitals spend in single-payer systems like Canada's or Scotland's. Similarly, U.S. physicians, who must bill hundreds of different insurance plans with varying payment and coverage rules, spend two to three times as much as our Canadian colleagues on billing.
Overall, these administrative savings for doctors and hospitals would amount to about $2.57 trillion over 10 year. Additional savings of more than $1.5 trillion from streamlined billing and administration would accrue to nursing homes, home-care agencies, ambulance companies, drug stores and other health care providers.
In total, the analysis underestimates administrative savings by about $6 trillion over 10 years.
3. Drug costs:
Reducing drug prices to the levels currently paid by European nations would save at least $1.1 trillion more over 10 years than the report posits.
4. Utilization of care:
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Moreover, no surge materialized when Medicare was implemented and millions of previously uninsured seniors got coverage. Between 1964 (before Medicare) and 1966 (the year when Medicare was fully functioning) there was absolutely no increase in the total number of doctor visit in the U.S.; Americans averaged 4.3 visits per person in 1964 and 4.3 visits per person in 1966. Instead, the number of visits by poor seniors went up, while the number of visits by healthy and wealthy patients went down slightly. The same thing happened in hospitals. There were no waiting lists, just a reduction in the utilization of unneeded elective care by wealthier patients, and the delivery of more care to sick people who needed it.
Rather than increasing national health spending, as the report claims, Sanders' plan (and the plan proposed by Physicians for a National Health Program) would almost certainly decrease total spending over the next 10 years.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/11/the-attack-on-bernie-sanders-single-payer-plan-is-ridiculous-commentary.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Response to Uncle Joe (Original post)
Since 1988, when Gallup routinely began conducting polls by telephone, there have been many years in which more Americans have identified as independents than as Republicans or independents. But the percentage of independents did not reach 40% until 2011, and it has stayed at or above that level for the past five years.
As a consequence, the percentage of U.S. adults identifying as Democrats is now at the lowest point in the past 27 years, down from the prior low of 30% in 2014. Gallup's shift from in-person to telephone interviewing in 1988 complicates the ability to directly compare party identification data collected between the two methods. However, Gallup data from 1951-1987 collected in person never found a yearly average Democratic identification less than 37%, making it safe to conclude that the current 29% is also the low point in Gallup polling history.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/188096/democratic-republican-identification-near-historical-lows.aspx
The general election war will be for the Independents, if the Democratic Party was wise, all states would have open primaries allowing fresh blood/new ideas/bold actions to reinvigorate the party and let the Republicans rot in their isolation.
are part of the grand conspiracy to unfairly criticize Sanders' socialist proposals by pointing out how much they would actually cost and how they would really increase the tax bill of the middle class. It would be so much easier for Uncle Bernie to sell his programs if everyone was allowed to believe that someone else will have to pay for them.
Now let's see who to believe the Tax policy Center which has specialized in evaluating tax plans for years or two dudes long committed to pushing for a single payer system writing for CNBC? Duh, that's a tough one. 
That is a fact. Why is that so hard to comprehend?
The 2014 Commonwealth Fund survey found that the United States ranks lowest when it comes to quality and efficiency of healthcare systems among 11 industrialized countries.
The healthcare system of the United States has been a topic of heated debate in the last decade but its performance has always remained consistent, ranking worst among industrialized countries for the fifth time. It was also the case in 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2010. The United Kingdom was ranked as the best while Switzerland followed closely behind. The researchers also studied Australia, France, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, New Zealand and Sweden.
The report said the United States spent $8,508 on healthcare per person in 2011 but the United Kingdom only spent $3,406 per person even as it ranked higher in providing quality and safe healthcare than the U.S. All other 10 nations spend a lot less than the U.S. healthcare per person and as a gross domestic product but still achieved better quality.
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/8652/20140617/u-s-health-care-system-ranks-last-lags-behind-developed-nations.htm
Why are you fighting for Republican style health care?
ridiculous prices that Americans pay for prescription drugs.
There is simply no logical reason for Americans to be paying the highest prices in the world except for greed and an asleep at the wheel monopolized, conflict of interest loaded corporate media conglomeration in the U.S.
This chart reveals the inhumanity of US drug prices compared to other countries
Corrupt former hedge funder Martin Shkreli — who hiked the price of an AIDS pill by 5500 percent overnight — is only the latest example of price gouging in the pharmaceutical industry. But US drug prices have been skyrocketing across the country for years. As the following chart illustrates, drug prices in the US are up to 10 times higher than in numerous other developed countries. Data comes from the International Federation of Health Plans (IFHP) 2013 Comparative Price Report.
http://usuncut.com/news/us-drug-prices-in-the-us-are-literally-insane-when-compared-to-other-nations/
Why do Americans spend so much on pharmaceuticals?
The United States spends almost $1,000 per person per year on pharmaceuticals. That’s around 40 percent more than the next highest spender, Canada, and more than twice as much as than countries like France and Germany spend. So why does the U.S. spend so much? Is it because Americans take more medicines or because they pay higher prices? Can Americans afford the drugs they need? And will the Affordable Care Act change anything?
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Americans also have faster access to new drugs than patients in many other countries. That’s in part because the U.S. has always been a very attractive market for pharmaceutical companies: It’s big, accounting for 34 percent of the world market; has low levels of price regulation; and offers few barriers to market entry once FDA approval has been secured. (By contrast, in some other countries there may be a time lag between clinical approval of a drug and the point when it is added to official lists of reimbursable drugs.)
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But if Americans take more pharmaceuticals, they also pay more for them. Prices in the U.S. for brand-name patented drugs are 50 to 60 percent higher than in France and twice as high as in the United Kingdom or Australia. That’s because in many countries, government agencies essentially regulate the prices of medicines and set limits to the amount they will reimburse; they may only agree to pay for a drug if they feel that the price is justified by the therapeutic benefits. This centralized approach can also give them more bargaining power over drug makers.
By contrast, in the U.S. insurers typically accept the price set by the makers for each drug, especially when there is no competition in a therapeutic area, and then cover the cost with high copayments. Where there are competing drugs, insurers enjoy more bargaining power and may negotiate discounts with manufacturers in exchange for lower cost-sharing for patients. In off-patent markets, the competition is fierce and prices of generic drugs are low. Generic penetration is high in the U.S. and their use spreads quickly: within six months of a patent expiring on a drug, generics typically account for 80 percent of the market. Generics now account for 28 percent of pharmaceutical spending and 84 percent of drugs dispensed in the U.S., which is high by OECD standards.
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Can patients access the drugs they need? While the financial burden for households has declined over the past years, it is clear that many Americans are not taking their recommended medications because of the high costs. A recent survey showed that around one in five U.S. adults did not fill out their prescription or skipped doses because of the costs of medicines in 2013. The proportion was less than one in ten in Germany, Canada and Australia. The difference is that, unlike in the U.S., health coverage in most other OECD tends to be universal. Patients often have to share the costs of pharmaceutical treatments, but they get exemptions if they are poor, severely ill or have reached a certain level of out-of-pocket payments.
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http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/americans-spend-much-pharmaceuticals/
Just shut up an support Hillary!
was done by professionals working for non-profit, non-partisan organizations who specialize in doing that kind of analysis. The OP is citing a article written two dudes who run an organization which has been pushing the single payer concept for years. Yea, we should believe them rather than believe the professionals who have no dog in the fight.
Check your facts before you post; it's less embarrassing that way.
A "Cost Analysis" which ignores everything purchased for that cost is completely meaningless. The entire premise is blatantly partisan.
A plausible study would have at least pretended to be a "Cost/Benefit Analysis"
This nonsense does not pass the 
test.
Peace to you, Duppers.
This garbage is absolutely a discredit to the clowns who wrote it.
OMG I just noticed that the realistic estimate of savings in payment processing overhead is identical to my own estimate: $6 trillion over ten years. 
