{"id":178873,"date":"2018-07-30T18:26:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-30T23:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/07\/30\/epic-fail-by-koch-suckers\/"},"modified":"2018-07-30T18:26:00","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T23:26:00","slug":"epic-fail-by-koch-suckers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/07\/30\/epic-fail-by-koch-suckers\/","title":{"rendered":"Epic Fail by Koch Suckers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 330px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"310\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fsenatorsanders%2Fvideos%2F10157195167352908%2F&amp;show_text=0&amp;width=310\" style=\"border: none; overflow: hidden;\" width=\"310\"><\/iframe><br \/><i>Yes, Bernie Sanders is thanking the Koch Brothers<\/i><\/div>\n<p>In the wholly owned Koch industries subsidiary formerly known as George Mason University, their even more owned think tank known as the Mercatus Center released a study on Medicare for all.<\/p>\n<p>They headlined that it would cost the federal government $32 tillion over the next 10 years.  What they relegated to the small print was that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacobinmag.com\/2018\/07\/medicare-for-all-mercatus-center-report\">it would save $34 trillion over the same period<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Oops:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The US could insure 30 million more Americans and virtually eliminate out-of-pocket health care expenses while saving $2 trillion in the process, according to a new report about Medicare for All released by the libertarian Mercatus Center.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In the report, Charles Blahous attempts to roughly score Bernie Sanders\u2019s most recent Medicare-for-All bill and reaches the somewhat surprising (for Mercatus) conclusion that, if the bill were enacted, the new costs it creates would be more than offset by the new savings it generates through administrative efficiencies and reductions in unit prices.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026 The net change across the whole ten-year period is a savings of $2.054 trillion.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">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.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Federal health expenditures refer to health spending from the federal government in particular. Since the federal government takes on nearly all health spending under Medicare for All, federal health expenditures will necessarily go up a lot, $32.6 trillion over the ten-year period according to Blahous. But this is more of an accounting thing than anything else: rather than paying premiums, deductibles, and co-pays for health care, people will instead pay a tax that is, on average, a bit less than they currently pay into the health care system and, for those on lower incomes, a lot less.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">But the real game here for Mercatus is to bury the money-saving finding in the report\u2019s tables while headlining the incomprehensibly large $32.6 trillion number in order to trick dim reporters into splashing that number everywhere and freaking out. This is a strategy that already appears to be working, as the Associated Press headline reads: \u201cStudy: \u2018Medicare for all\u2019 projected to cost $32.6 trillion.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">But even if you take the report\u2019s headline figures at face value, the picture it paints is that of an enormous bargain. We get to insure every single person in the country, virtually eliminate cost-sharing, and save everyone from the hell of constantly changing health insurance all while saving money. You would have to be a fool to pass that offer up.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The real problem that Mercatus has with Medicare for all is that people named Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch will be paying more in taxes than they will personally get in benefits, so it must be fought tooth and nail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, Bernie Sanders is thanking the Koch Brothers In the wholly owned Koch industries subsidiary formerly known as George Mason University, their even more owned think tank known as the Mercatus Center released a study on Medicare for all. They headlined that it would cost the federal government $32 tillion over the next 10 years. &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[544,588,463,387,406,403],"class_list":["post-178873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-academe","tag-fail","tag-healthcare","tag-hypocrisy","tag-stupid","tag-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}