- The report’s methods are pretty straightforward. Blahous starts with current projections about how much the country will spend on health care between 2022 and 2031. From there, he adds the costs associated with higher utilization of medical services and then subtracts the savings from lower administrative costs, lower reimbursements for medical services, and lower drug prices. After this bit of arithmetic, Blahous finds that health expenditures would be lower for every year during the first decade of implementation. The net change across the whole ten-year period is a savings of $2.054 trillion.
When talking about Medicare for All, it is important to distinguish between two concepts: national health expenditures and federal health expenditures. National health expenditures refer to all health spending from any source whether made by private employers, state Medicaid programs, or the federal government. It is national health expenditures that, according to the report, will decline by $2.054 trillion.
$34Trillion over 10 years versus the $49T we spend now.
My problem with stories like this is that they over-emphasize the financial aspect. The left has, for some reason, completely given up on making moral arguments, which I don't understand. Not everything has to be cheaper to be the right decision. Meanwhile, this is one of those things, like public transportation, that the U.S. will be dragged into kicking and screaming only after we've run out of excuses for not doing it. The result will mean it's worse and more expensive than it would've been, and we're going to let some people die in the meantime.