$40T in Savings from Medicare for All

Right-wing think tank the Cato Institute calculates $40 trillion in savings from Medicare for All

A Right-wing libertarian think tank has confirmed that Medicare for All would provide massive savings. Savings that could be as high as $40 trillion with Medicare for all.

That’s right, folks.

The Cato Institute put out an analysis on Thursday, August the 13th intended to terrify America of the DSA agenda.

Unfortunately for them, math was not on their side.

Their own analysis suggests universal healthcare saves Americans between $40 trillion and $4 trillion over the next decade, depending on how well we implement it.

They reckon that universal health care would cost anywhere between 40 trillion and 75 trillion. What they what I failed to mention is that the current, albeit shitty, health care system we have now is projected to cost around $80 trillion over that same stretch.

Both of Cato’s estimates, their low one and their absolute worst case, save America money over the current system. The people that are trying to terrify us about doing things differently weren’t able to get their math to work because, guess what? It turns out it’s more effective, efficient, and cost-effective to cover everybody all at the same time from one pool of cash.

We are closing in on the $100,000 goal for our progressive Super PAC. If you haven’t thrown in yet this is where.

So if we actually implemented it efficiently and did it well, if America did the thing where we’re the best country on the planet, then that would mean we save about $40 trillion over the next 10 years. Which would be more than enough money to ramp up the needed supply side of our health care system. It would be more than enough money, while still saving money, to build new hospitals and clinics, reopen rural hospitals and clinics, training a generation of medical professionals, revive the health care deserts in thousands of American counties, and have cash to spare.

This isn’t some former AOC/Bernie lefty fella saying this. It’s a Libertarian, right-wing institute think tank telling us that just moving to DSA’s big idea version of Medicare for all will free up enough money from the American economy to satisfy build a world class healthcare system.

It turns out, if you look under the hood just a little bit at the engines that drive our economy (whether it’s health care, education, child care, infrastructure, scientific research, or pharmaceutical production), you’ll see that there is massive waste, fraud, and abuse. The waste, fraud, and abuse happens after we write the checks. The problem is when the US becomes an ATM for corporations big and small.

This is the argument we’re taking across the country, on television, in mailboxes, and in the polling we field ourselves. Every dollar this week goes to keeping that machine running.

When we go after the waste, fraud, and abuse at the level of the corporations that are scamming us, robbing us blind, then we find that there is a significant savings. We can have more for less. That’s the crazy thing here: more for less.

Just fixing the one element of our healthcare system of who pays for it, let alone restructuring the entire system itself. We turn an $80 trillion machine of denial, waiting, telephone calls, and endless questions of “Are they in my network or are they not?” into a 50% savings that takes much of that irritation.

I say we can do even better than that.

Healthcare as a utility. Doctors, nurses, dentists, all the folks who make up that system, as plentiful as electricity and water. As easy to reach as the tap and the light switch. There’d be nothing left to fight over.

What if our health care system was as trusted as the fire department? When your kitchen’s ablaze and you dial 911, you know a red truck and excited, ready-to-go people are coming to help you.

That can only be done by changing the way we do it. Not writing bigger checks to the same middlemen. Building it. Training the doctors. Pouring the concrete. Running it ourselves, like we’ve done before, like we can do again.

Cato wrote this report to scare us off, but if you just look at it, it’s the best news we could have gotten.

Corbin Trent

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