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Thursday, January 14, 2016

Why Are Republicans Saying Hillary Lied About Bernie's Healthcare Plan?

When you consider the attacks they have levied and still levy against ACA-to say nothing of the lawsuits-it's rich to hear folks like Morning Joe and his Republican guests talk about how HRC is a lying about Bernie's single payer plan.

It's not like she claimed he will set up death panels or anything.

Yet no one has actually shown how she's 'lied.' This lie is of the same quality of the 'lie' she allegedly told about Trump being the best recruitment tool for ISIS.

In 2012 the GOP lied all election about how Obama cut Medicare via the ACA. But now Bernie wants to simply do away with Medicare and saying so is a lie? 

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/01/chelsea-clinton-was-right.html

Meanwhile Amanda Girard kind of exaggerates how much Politifact 'debunked' HRC"s argument.

"According to Politifact’s recent analysis of Bernie Sanders’ proposal to expand Medicare to all Americans under his “Medicare for All” single-payer healthcare system, Sanders’ plan would save the average household between $505 and $1,823 per year — just shy of a $1,200 average cost savings. While this figure is lower than the Sanders campaign’s estimate of $3,855 to $5,173 in savings, it still means American families will pay less under single-payer healthcare than they currently do under the Affordable Care Act."

http://usuncut.com/news/bernie-sanders-healthcare-plan-would-save-the-average-american-family-1200/

It was surprising to me that on an issue this complex with so many moving parts, Poltifact would so categorically declare that Bernie is right. When you actually read their analysis, it's' far less categorical than Girard presents it.

Experts agreed that single-payer gets you more bang for your buck by reducing administrative overhead, hospital and doctor's’ fees, and prescription drug prices. But some say Sanders is overestimating the potential reductions.

With Sanders’ proposed taxes, costs would need to be trimmed by roughly 42 to 47 percent — a tall order when "the most generous estimates of how much you could cut cost are on the order of 20 percent," said Sherry Glied, a professor of health policy and economics at New York University who’s served in the George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations.

"And there are a lot of people who don’t believe those numbers are possible," she said. "Single-payer saves money, but it doesn’t save all the money in the system."

Joseph Antos, a health policy economist with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said, "The kind of money he’s talking about goes way beyond any plausible guess about how much inefficiency can be ‘wrung out of the system’ — a phrase that makes one think this should be easy when it is very difficult to do."

"Others, however, are more optimistic that Sanders’ plan could be actuarially sound.

"The tax rates are probably on the low side of what would be necessary, but not out of the ballpark," said Peter Hussey, a healthy policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, adding that they would work only with significant cost savings and lower benefits.

"Hussey pointed to other financing models with higher taxes. In Sanders’ own Vermont, the proposed single-payer state system would require a payroll tax of 11.5 percent and a sliding income tax of 0 to 9.5 percent. A national single-payer system would require a payroll tax of 11.7 percent, according to the National Institute for Health Care Reform."

"Gerald Friedman, a health economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst,analyzed a different 2013 Medicare-for-all bill proposed by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and concluded it would be enough to cover everyone, upgrade benefits and save the country $5 trillion over a decade."

"But beyond a 6-percent income tax and a sliding payroll tax of 3 to 6 percent, that would require a financial transaction tax (Sanders included this in his 2013 bill but has since committed the tax to free college tuition) as well an estate tax, a capital gains tax and a cap on high-income tax deductions. (Sanders has proposed these but hasn’t said they’ll be used to pay for health care.)

"Friedman calculated that with the extra taxes and some tweaks, Sanders’ plan would provide ample coverage and even generate a surplus of $51 billion. Meanwhile, he said, middle-class families would still save thousands, inequality in care and costs would be dramatically reduced, and the overall population would be healthier."

Speaking of Vermont maybe Bernie can explain its failure there if there are no risks?

"Even if we set aside the issue of a potentially unbalanced ledger, experts point out several other problems with Sanders’ simple promise of savings."

"First, it’s not guaranteed that workers will have the same quality or amount of care under a Medicare-for-all system."

Most employer-based health insurance policies currently have more comprehensive coverage than traditional Medicare, pointed out William Hsiao, a leading health economist at Harvard University who designed universal coverage systems for Vermont, China, Sweden, and South Africa, to name a few.

Ok, so you get the point this is not a simple issue. Bernie and his Maniacs make it much simpler than it is.

A good question for Bernie is Vermont. Hillary's plan is to have incremental change to Obamacare. And the ACA allows states to improve it in all kind of ways too. They can expand it, add a public option and single payer.

And Bernie's state of Vermont did just that. Yet it failed. If Hillary is wrong suggesting there are any risks or reservations about Bernie's plan that he won't release, why did it fail in Vermont?

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/single-payer-vermont-113711

If it fails in such a small, progressive state how does it make it at the national level?

Of course, we can ask the same question of Bernie himself. If his own state rejected him for Governor how can an entire large country have that faith?

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