“Medicare for All” would save the U.S $5.1 Trillion over 10 years

[u/The-Lucky-Investor]

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/11/30/easy-pay-something-costs-less-new-study-shows-medicare-all-would-save-us-51-trillion

[u/effdubbs]

I don’t know if this claim or its math are accurate. What I do know is this: US healthcare is in crisis. I’m a nurse practitioner and I have never seen turnover like this before, especially of physicians. The workload and environment are untenable. Systems are crumbling, yet money continues to be extracted. Patients and workers are not getting what they need.

Another thing I know, patients wait here too, sometimes for over a year, depending on the complaint and specialty. The argument to keep our system as is because patients wait in single payor systems is simply not a good one.

[u/16semesters → u/effdubbs]

It's saying that it would cut costs by roughly 11%, which is rather audacious.

Medicare admin costs would be the same, or higher, which is around 2-5% under M4A.

Private insurance admin+profit is ~17%.

However only about 65% of people are on private insurance.

So even if you dropped all private insurance and profit to admin rates of Medicare, it wouldn't cut over all costs by 11%. They are claiming some downstream economic benefits which may or may not be actualized.

[u/effdubbs → u/16semesters]

I agree. I’d like to see the data behind this claim.