Bruenig explains:
The CBO finds that the current Medicare administrative costs that are often touted by advocates are actually higher than the administrative costs you would expect in a single-payer system because a large share of those costs are tied up in tasks like eligibility determination and collection of Medicare Part B premiums that would no longer exist in a Medicare-for-All system.
He adds:
The barriers to the policy are not technical deficiencies or costs, but rather political opposition from Republicans and conservative Democrats who would rather spend more money to provide less healthcare.
It's just a matter of priorities.
The neo-liberal shift over the past forty years has prioritized Wall Street, the defense industry, and generally any individual or corporation ideologically committed enough to capitalize on the "money=free speech" argument the Supreme Court agreed is constitutional.
That includes health-insurance companies.
Consider that over the past twelve years we have spent in the neighborhood of between $20-$35 trillion on corporate bailouts.
All that time we could have been providing healthcare.
Right now, combining Medicare, Medicaid, insurance premiums, and out-of-pocket costs, we are expected to spend about $52 trillion on health care during the next decade.
But Medicare-for-All would eliminate premiums and out-of-pocket costs, reducing the price tag to between $20 trillion and $36 trillion over the same period.
That happens to be same amount the federal government set aside for corporate welfare since 2008.
After the 2008 financial crash, we granted $700 billion to big banks.
The Federal Reserve committed between $16 trillion and $29 trillion to large financial institutions.
Lawmakers recently handed $4 trillion in pandemic relief to large corporations.
Two years ago, Republicans jumped at the opportunity to cite a Koch Brothers-funded Mercatus Center study to prove once and for all single-payer health care is too expensive, despite its economic advantages and popularity among the public and U.S. lawmakers.
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