Today in the US, over 25 million Americans lack access to health care and another 37 million are underinsured. The Medicare for All Act of 2019, proposed by Bernie Sanders, supposedly helps to fix our healthcare system, by providing healthcare to every man, woman, and child in our country, without out-of-pocket expenses. Bernie Sanders claims this bill will save the US billions of dollars on a yearly basis and will improve the quality of life for millions of middle and lower class families across the country. But, is this actually the case? The reality is that M4A will do exactly the opposite, by posing as a financial burden for hardworking families, spurring a doctor shortage, in addition to providing the lowest quality care for those whom it is supposed to help. Let’s take a deeper look at the main reasons why Medicare for All is simply not the answer.
On Feb. 24, Bernie Sanders, released an outline listing his proposed plans to finance his agenda, including Medicare-for-all. The estimates stated in Sanders’ outline is based on incorrect math and false assumptions. The Senator has gone to great lengths to avoid revealing the true cost of the program, and immensely underestimates the funds needed to implement it. According to a study from the Urban Institute, Medicare for All, or M4A, would be an addition of $32.6 trillion to national health expenditure over the next 10 years. Additionally, the study states that Sanders’s proposed tax increases and financing would be inadequate and that supplementary revenue would be needed. As per a recent American Action Forum analysis, including the cost of a new federal long-term care entitlement, the 10-year cost of Medicare-for-all soars to $46 trillion. Sanders’ outline includes 4 percent income tax on all households earning over $29,000 annually, a 7.5 percent payroll tax, and a corporate income tax rate of 35%. By implementing these taxes, the US corporate tax rates would become the highest in the world, and additionally would result in lower wages for workers. To add on, even by passing every single one of the taxes on Sanders’ outline, we would not even come close to covering the full care of M4A. In total, the proposed taxes add up to around $17.5 trillion, barely a third of what is needed to fund M4A. The reality is that the taxes needed to sufficiently fund Medicare for All are disastrously high, making M4A an unreasonable deal for the majority of Americans.
Because Sanders’ highly flawed financing proposals are hardly a fraction of the true cost of M4A, additional payroll and income taxes are inevitably going to be part of the plan as well. According to the Milliman index, which tracks annual health care spending, a majority of the 181 million taxpayers with employer-sponsored insurance are likely to see their taxes swell under M4A because their company currently covers around 56% of their medical expenditure. For example, a citizen with an income of $50,000 with employer-sponsored insurance currently spends around $5,250 per year on health care, and under Sanders’s plan, their taxes would be close to double the person’s current health care expenditure. Even those on Medicaid, the government-sponsored coverage program for the lower class, can expect to see their tax burdens become much more than their current spending. M4A’s entire purpose is shattered, as the people whom it is supposed to help most are actually the ones who will pay the most under a single payer system.
Many argue that every American has the right to high quality health care and medical attention, and that Medicare for All would help to resolve this problem. However, with millions more patients and a decreasing number of doctors, we can expect to see wait times skyrocket and the standard of care to decline severely. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office states that a reduction in provider payment rates would most likely abate the quantity and quality of the care Americans receive. Furthermore, an additional write up conducted by Partnership for America’s Health Care Future finds that the physician workforce would suffer a loss of more than 44,000 doctors by 2050 with a single payer system. To add on, Medicare for All would only pay 60–70% of what private insurers pay, according to Washington Policy, resulting in a diminishing work incentive for aspiring physicians as well. US News reports that as a result of Canada’s Medicare for All system, patients can expect to wait up to 9 weeks for treatment. Therefore, around 52,000 Canadians sought medical care abroad in 2014, according to The Fraser Institute, a Canadian policy think tank.
Imagine living in a society where low income and middle class families are not able to put food on the table because they are forced to pay unreasonable high amounts for a system that is not even effective. Even after paying tens of thousands of dollars in taxes, they are forced to wait many weeks for low quality care and treatment. If we were to implement Medicare for All, we would be placing an abominably massive financial burden on middle and lower class families and stimulating a dearth of physicians only to provide low quality care with high wait times. By abolishing private insurance used by over 217 million Americans and replacing it with an ineffective and expensive system, we are making a deleterious choice for hundreds of millions of Americans, and the costs simply outweigh the benefits.
