Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All plan: US would actually be saving money
businessinsider.com
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This stuff is so misleading. Most countries with universal healthcare don't have "Medicare for all." Germany, for example, has a system of public health insurance entities with mandatory enrollment of employed workers. It is paid for by a very high (15.5%, split between employer and employee), and rather regressive (only on the first 52,000 euro per year of income) payroll tax. By comparison, the U.S. Medicare tax is just 2.9%, on all income with no cap. No deductibles or co-pays in Sanders' plan? How about France, where most medical care has 30% co-insurance (government only covers 70% of cost)?
His heart is in the right place, but Sanders lives on a planet where if only the U.S. would cut its defense spending down to NATO levels (cutting about $250 billion a year), we could afford to spend trillions more per year on free healthcare, free education, etc. Except Europe isn't a liberal paradise--they have to make ends meet like anyone else. So you get free education in Germany, with aggressive tracking to keep most people out of the educational system after age 16. You get 40% income tax rates on people making median incomes or below, 20-25% VAT that primarily affects the middle and lower classes, but low corporate taxes (because you have to keep businesses around to bankroll the welfare state). There is no major European country that meets the Sanders ideal of offering free healthcare and education, but which encourages everyone to take advantage of those things, and also pays for it by taxing primarily the rich and corporations.
Absolutely untrue. What actually happens is that the german education system is focused on landing you a job the moment you finish education or having already landed a job.
The german education system is quite complex, so you obviously need to keep at it. The easy way is general school which does end at 16 but on the other hand you'll get tracked into a job if possible. All other schools take you beyond 18 years old and will all try to either get you to the next education level (tertiary schools or university).
Even university, at least the applied sciences ones, will get you an internship at a company so that once you finish you have a job.
That is the ultimate goal of all german education. Get the education you want if you can show the performance for it and then have a job when you're done. You can pick any of the educational paths you want. Nobody forces you into general school and having a job with 16.
When Sanders talks about education, he's talking about the equivalent of Gymnasiam followed by university. My understanding (my wife went to Gymnasium for a year) is that most students track to Realschule, finish after grade 10, and then have some period of job-related school.
I understand this depends on the state, but Wikipedia suggests this arrangement is typical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abitur#Statistics. According to this: http://dref.de/en/research/student-numbers-in-germany, about 57% of the 50%-ish students who graduate with an Abitur go on to college right after, or under 30% of students overall. In the U.S., that figure is 65%.
> Get the education you want if you can show the performance for it and then have a job when you're done.
That's rationing! And it would be a political non-starter for a "free college" system in the U.S. (So would this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hochbegabtenstudium. Even Republicans would never suggest something like that in the U.S.)
Job related school is 50/50 some just go directly into a mentorship or similar where they are taught on location from a senior in the same job.
>That's rationing!
Of course it is. Universities don't have infinite amount of seats and I'd rather have people who are willing and capable of being there than people who can pay for the privilege of being there.
>Hochbegabtenstudium
That is very very rare, I haven't met anyone who qualified for it. It also requires having finished 10th grade, which means you're 17 or 18 old at that point.
From the Realschule you'd take a tertiary school (there is two choices I went with College of Further Education) with or without tertiary language.
Having a tertiary language enables university, without you can only go to universities for applied sciences.
From the Gymnasium you can go either.
Off that tangent, the goal of the hochbegabtenstudium is to enable people who are smart to finish their education early so they can be more productive for longer in society (and don't sit around in the classroom being bored)
>When Sanders talks about education, he's talking about the equivalent of Gymnasiam followed by university.
It's probably the result of german education but I don't think everyone should need or want to go to University.
Normal school should be sufficient to earn you basically any job and from Realschule I know several people who went directly into the banking business or mechanical engineering.
Of course, not all jobs are enabled by the average education but you can usually get a job in the field you want if you show enough elbow grease and have a Realschule diploma.
I think Germans also lack some of the ambition to always want to get the highest degree of education even if they don't need it. People I know from school generally tended to be very realistic about which job they wanted, what options they had and usually picked the lowest one that would get them the job with good probability.
>edit I didn't spot
Those numbers would align with what I know, people who do the Abitur usually want to go to higher education (though not all)
What these studies show is that the money necessary for free healthcare is already being spent by Americans on a far less efficient and inequitable healthcare system. It’s an allocation problem and a political problem. It’s not an economic problem.
If Bernie ran on the platform of making the U.S. like Germany--i.e. doubling taxes on people making under $100k, tracking the majority of students (disproportionately minorities) off the college track at 16, in return for free healthcare and education--do you think he'd continue to be the most popular U.S. politician?
Look at the two major components here: https://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/reformcommission/chapters/ch5.h...
These are the only two components that can very effectively manipulate the political entities at election time and not surprisingly, they have the most budget attached to it. The per-capita cost is about $2000 but the related taxes are much higher.
Add onto that the debt attached to every healthcare dollar, which I last recall was about 30c and it is unsustainable.
I could give you both anecdata and/or build a more full fledged argument. But what is far more interesting, from where I am sitting, is how you could miss such a reality. What assumptions are you making that make that reality unlikely ? and what would it change (maybe nothing, it's an honest question) if you were hypothetically proven wrong ?
Again, It's an honest question. I am genuinely intrigued and just trying to understand what I am missing.
It would be interesting to see how medical pricing (regardless of who's paying) compares between France and the USA. For example, do you get those crazy "$200 for a fruit cup" type charges in France?
France: $4500 USD per person
US: $10,200 USD per person
https://www.businessinsider.com/author/bob-bryan
Bias much? Journalism is dead. What a joke of an article.
I don't really care about the economic arguments. Not only can we afford to take good care of our own, there's a strong moral argument for doing so.
Not doing it is a priority problem.
Single payer care allows labour mobility because employment no longer dictates care. It's small business friendly since people can take a financial risk knowing they are not taking a medical risk for themselves or their family. It's big business friendly since employers don't have to manage medical benefits anymore. It's health care provider friendly since the administration overhead of billing to a single payer is greatly reduced.
> The average single adult makes $44,348 and pays $19,759 in taxes, with $4,640 going to health care insurance.
That's about 45% tax for someone making an average salary. In Maryland, that tax would be under 25%.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that public healthcare isn't a good idea. (I think it is.) My point is that Canada didn't get public healthcare by declaring "we don't care about economics" (like OP). They figured out how to pay for it in realistic ways. That means they decided to tax the average guy on the street 45%. And cut taxes dramatically on corporations--to less than half the U.S. rate--in order to keep that dude employed and paying into the system: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the... (Figure 2). Canada isn't fantasy Bernie Sanders world where we declare "screw economics," give everyone free healthcare, and raises taxes on rich people and corporations.
You can refer to this tax calculator for a more accurate estimate of a single persons tax obligations at $44,348.
https://simpletax.ca/calculator
As you will see, it’s no where near the 45%.
When CBC did a series to name the greatest Canadian the name that came back was Tommy Douglas, the father of universal care in our country.