Yale Professor : Sanders' Medicare For All Plan to Decrease Spending By $450 billion
2020 ELECTIONS
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Sean Rayford/Getty Images
By AARON KERSHAWAs Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) feels the heat of frontrunner status at tonights CBS Debate, a newly conducted Yale study of his Medicare For All Act claims Sanders’ plan would decrease spending by nearly half a trillion dollars per year.
Sanders referenced the study during the Democratic primary debate in Las Vegas saying his plan, “would save $450 billion a year because we are eliminating the absurdity of thousands of separate plans that require hundreds of billions of dollars a year in administration.” Sanders continued, “... ending the $100 billion a year in profiteering for the drug companies and the insurance companies.”
Yale Epidemiology professor and “unpaid informal advisor” Allison Galvani who conducted the study published in Lancet on Feb. 15 claims that the plan would lower cost by lowering the frequency of emergency room visits, lessening fraud, and simplifying our current more convoluted system.
Galvani told the Yale Daily News, “Medicare for all is actually simply the most fiscally responsible thing we can do for our country.” Galvani explained, “There are so many entities at the moment; its an incredibly inefficient system we have right now.”
The study estimates that 37 million Americans who are now uninsured - with 41 million underinsured- would now be covered under this plan, with the preventative care they’d receive saving $80 million according to the new study.
“The entire system could be funded with less financial outlay than is incurred by employers and households paying for health-care premiums combined with existing government allocations,” the report states.
Finally, the study found that universal healthcare access would save 68,000 lives every year in contrast to our current system. We will see if Sanders again references the study tonight in defense of his most controversial policy prescription.
