Bernie Sanders' "Medicare for All" plan is really expensive over a 10-year period....

[Angrboda]

We’re asking the wrong question about Medicare-for-all

So let me suggest a different question that might be asked not to those advocating Medicare-for-all, but to those opposing it and those journalists assuming it is unrealistic: How do you propose to come up with the $50 trillion you want to spend on health care over the next 10 years?

Because that’s what the status quo is going to cost. The questions about the cost of Medicare-for-all seem to come from a bizarre alternate universe where we aren’t spending anything now on health care, and we’re going to have to come up with a shocking amount of new money to fund this crazy idea of giving everyone coverage.

This $50 trillion number comes from the most recent projections by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which say that America will spend $3.7 trillion on health care this year, a figure that will increase by 5 to 6 percent per year in the coming years. Their projections go only to 2026, so I extended them out two years, assuming a 6 percent increase per year, to reach a full decade from 2019 to 2028. When you add the numbers up, you get $50.3 trillion over the next 10 years. That’s what we’re going to spend if we change nothing.