Earlier this week, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a libertarian-conservative think-tank lavishly financed by the Mercers, the Kochs, and other wingnut sugar parents, released a completely unsurprising report saying that a program of Medicare for All would cost $32 trillion. This number was cited in the report, and by the authors, in the doomstruck tones of the town fathers when they discover that the Undead are showing up at the drive-in every Friday night.

Unfortunately for them, when people started looking more closely at the Mercatus Center data, they discovered that, even by the Center’s calculations, the Medicare for All plan being pushed by Bernie Sanders actually would save billions in healthcare costs while covering 30 million more people. From Business Insider:

According to the Mercatus model, total health spending would actually come in about $303 billion lower in 2031 than under current projections, with $7.35 trillion going to healthcare that year versus $7.65 trillion expected now. Total national health spending would be $2 trillion lower from 2022 to 2031 under the plan, the report found. While the price tag for the federal government would increase significantly, decreased spending by other groups would lower total healthcare spending over that 10-year period. Meanwhile, the model also assumes that 30 million more people would get access to healthcare, and many people would get more robust services. The savings would come from a variety of places, such as the government's ability to leverage its bargaining power into lower prescription-drug costs and mandating all healthcare providers take the lower Medicare payment rate.

In addition, there's mounting evidence that the attempts by the administration to sabotage the Affordable Care Act may be having the exactly opposite effect.



But, given the way things are, if you say “$32 trillion” over and over again in a voice like Peter Cushing’s, you can pretty much win the argument by losing.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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