Politics
Reuters
FILE PHOTO: Participants hold signs as Democratic U.S. presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks at a
- A preliminary study from a budget watchdog found that financing Medicare for All would require "impossibly high taxes" on wealthy Americans and corporations - and likely compel the middle class to carry some of the responsibility paying for universal healthcare coverage in the United States.
- The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget published research on Monday on how Medicare for All could be paid for.
- Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are both staunch supported of the proposal, which would roughly cost an estimated $30 trillion over the next decade.
- "There is not enough annual income available among higher earners to finance the full cost of Medicare for All," the group said.
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A preliminary study from a budget watchdog found that financing Medicare for All would require "impossibly high taxes" on wealthy Americans and corporations - and likely compel the middle class to carry some of the responsibility paying for universal healthcare coverage in the United States.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget published research on Monday on how Medicare for All could be paid for and provided a list of nine possible options. It said that taxes on the wealthy alone would not be enough to cover it.
"There is not enough annual income available among higher earners to finance the full cost of Medicare for All," the group said.
Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are both staunch supporters of the proposal, which would roughly cost an estimated $30 trillion over the next decade and expand coverage to include vision and dental. It would require a drastic overhaul in how the government taxes, spends, and borrows money.
"Each of these choices would have consequences for the distribution of income, growth in the economy, and ability to raise new revenue," the group wrote.
The possible financing options include:
- A new 32% payroll tax on wages
- An additional 25% income tax
- New 42% value-added tax on consumption
- Mandatory public premium averaging $7,500 per capita - or $12,000 per person not already on public insurance
- More than doubling all individual and corporate income tax rates
- Plunging non-health federal spending by 80%
- More than doubling the national debt with increasing gross domestic product by 108 percent
- Combination of the approaches above
Marc Goldwein, the head of policy for the budget watchdog, told Politico that paying for the system would all but certainly require some form of tax increases.
"No matter how you cut the numbers, htere is absolutely no way to pay for Medicare for All without tax increases - or spending cuts - on the middle class," Goldwein told Politico. "That doesn't mean middle-class costs will go up... but taxes will go up for sure."
Sanders helped thrust Medicare for All into mainstream
But he's argued that while taxes would increase under Medicare for All, it would save middle-class families money by reducing premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
Warren, however, has struggled to explain how she would pay for Medicare for All, and hasn't rolled out a plan on her own yet. Her primary rivals have pummeled her in recent weeks over her evasiveness on the issue, but she says she will release a financing a plan laying out how she would pay for the healthcare overhaul.
- Read more:
- Democrats are clashing over how to fix US health care. Here are the 7 key terms you need to know.
- Medicare for most, If not all: We polled Americans to find out what a popular universal healthcare coverage plan in the US could look like
- A new poll found the aggressive Medicare for All plan Bernie Sanders has championed is getting less popular as time goes on
- The 4 Democratic presidential candidates who cosponsored Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All Senate bill either no longer support it or won't say if they do