AP Photo Bernie Sanders disputes WSJ claim of $18 trillion in new spending

Bernie Sanders is pushing back against a Wall Street Journal report that calculated the total cost of his proposed polices as $18 trillion over 10 years.

"That is not the reality, and we will be responding to the Wall Street Journal on that. I think most of the expense that they put in there, the expenditures, have to do with a single-payer health care system," the independent Vermont senator said in an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday.


Sanders said the WSJ had "significantly exaggerated" those costs, and hadn't accounted for the benefits of "eliminating the cost that you incur with private health insurance."

According to the WSJ, Sanders' program would include $15 trillion in additional costs "for a government-run health-care program that covers every American, plus large sums to rebuild roads and bridges, expand Social Security and make tuition free at public colleges."

Sanders, in the MSNBC interview, argued that a single-payer system was preferable to the status quo, in which many Americans' health care is tied to their jobs.

"The truth of the matter right now is that as a nation, we spend far far more on health care per person than the people of any other nation. And yet we continue to have about 30 million people who have no health insurance, many more who are underinsured and we pay, again, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs," Sanders said. "No question to my mind that moving toward a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program is the most cost-effective way to provide health care to all of our people."

The Journal report also noted that to pay for Sanders' new proposals, he would increase taxes that would bring in $6.5 trillion over 10 years, leaving a $12.5 trillion gap.

Sanders countered that the Journal didn't really delve too deeply into his proposals to tax the wealthiest Americans.

"Second point, which they really didn't get into, is: We are going to demand that the wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country do start paying their fair share of taxes," Sanders said. "When we have massive income and wealth inequality — when 58 percent of all income is going to the top 1 percent, when you have major corporations in a given year paying zero in federal income taxes, yes we need real tax reform to bring in substantially more revenue."