HuffPost
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-health_us_56b25e8fe4b04f9b57d83008
More Signs Of Fuzzy Math In The Bernie Sanders Health Plan
Another week, another report questioning the Sanders proposal's basic assumptions.
There’s new reason to think the numbers in the Bernie Sanders health care plan don’t add up.
On Wednesday, the
Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan Washington think tank, released an analysis of Sanders’ proposal to replace existing health insurance arrangements with a single, government-run plan that would look something like Medicare.
Sanders has said that his
plan would pay for itself, partly by making the U.S. health care system more efficient and partly by raising revenue through a series of new taxes. In the end, Sanders has promised, the vast majority of Americans would actually be better off financially, paying less in taxes under his program than they would pay in premiums plus out-of-pocket expenses under the current system.
...
Like most analyses that circulate during presidential campaigns, this one is rough. And the Sanders campaign is challenging the report by assailing the credibility of the source -- something it also did
last week, when a prominent health care economist released a similarly critical analysis.
But if the findings from this new report are even in the right ballpark, then either the benefits Sanders has promised would have to be smaller, the taxes for the plan would have to be higher, or the program as a whole would create huge new deficits.
...
The report is the second in two weeks to scrutinize the arithmetic of Sanders' health plan. The previous
report, from Emory University professor
Kenneth Thorpe, suggests that estimates of health care savings in the Sanders plan are even more
off the mark. Among the reasons: Such severe reductions in hospital payments would cause closures and shortages that neither the industry nor the public would tolerate.
...
But the center's analysts have a reputation for intellectually sound work. They are relying on the same theories about tax policy that economists at the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation use. And they are hardly the only respected
experts raising
questions about the
assumptions in the Sanders plan -- and whether those assumptions are
realistic.