The Urban Institute estimates a $700 billion increase in national health expenditures in 2020. For example, Charles Blahous estimated that if Medicare for All were able to sustain Medicare rates, national health expenditures could be as much as $2 trillion lower and under a more realistic scenario they would be $3.3 trillion higher. Though the change could be significant, it would be far smaller than the effect on the federal government alone. The net effect could be a decrease or increase in national health expenditures. At the same time federal costs would go up, costs to the private sector – including premiums and cost-sharing – would go down. Importantly, these totals represent the increased cost to the federal government, not the change in total national health expenditures. Depending on provider payment levels, administrative costs, and state contributions, that figure could fall to as low as $27.5 trillion and as high as $35 trillion.
More recently, a new study from the Urban Institute and Commonwealth Fund found that a single-payer system like Medicare for All, with broad benefits and no cost-sharing, would cost the federal government about $32 trillion (net of $34 trillion of spending and $2 trillion of revenue).
Medicare for All has a multi-trillion dollar funding hole – TrueĬlaim #1: Medicare for All will cost $30 trillion over ten yearsĭuring the debate, former Vice President Biden stated the Medicare for All plan favored by several candidates would cost ”at least $30 trillion over ten years.” That’s largely true: a range of third party estimates found that Senator Sanders’s 2016 Medicare for All plan would cost $25 trillion to $36 trillion over a decade, with the average at about $30 trillion. The annual cost of Medicare for All would be more than the entire federal budget – Largely FalseĮliminating the Department of Defense entirely would pay for only four months of Medicare for All – Largely True
Medicare for All will cost $30 trillion over ten years – True We have compiled and briefly expanded upon those four fact checks below.
During the fourth Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential election cycle, former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg made a number of statements related to the potential cost of a Medicare for All plan.ĭuring our live tweeting of the debate – which we do for all debates as part of our US Budget Watch 2020 series – we tweeted brief fact checks of these claims, which ranged from “true” to “largely true” to “largely false.”