“Medicare for All,” a federally funded universal healthcare plan championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vermont–Ind.), has quickly become a key issue for progressive voters evaluating Democratic Party candidates for the 2018 midterm elections and the 2020 presidential race. The plan would provide coverage for the 40 million currently uninsured in the United States, a gap that is estimated to cause tens of thousands of deaths annually. Despite this, Medicare for All has received no shortage of negativecoverage in the media, all revolving around the same question: Just how are we going to pay for it?

A study on the cost of Medicare for All was recently conducted by Charles Blahous for the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Blahous’ study projected that Sanders’ Medicare for All system, assuming it was enacted in 2022, would cost the federal government a whopping $32.6 trillion in excess spending over the course of 10 years.

The startling price tag provoked widespread coverage in news outlets, especially conservative ones:

“Bernie’s “Medicare for All” Predicted to Cost Nearly $33 Trillion” (Axios, 7/30/18)

“Bernie Sanders’ ‘Medicare for All’ Would Cost $32.6 Trillion: Study” (The Hill, 7/30/18)

“Bernie Sanders’ ‘Medicare for All’ Bill Estimated to Cost $32.6T, New Study Says” (Fox News, 7/30/18)

“STUDY: ‘Medicare for All’ Would Cost $32.6 Trillion Over Ten Years” (National Review, 7/30/18)

“New Study Pegs Cost of Sanders’ ‘Medicare for All’ at $32 Trillion” (Washington Examiner, 7/30/18)

“Bernie Sanders’ Medicare-for-All Plan Will Cost $32 Trillion Over 10 Years” (Reason.com, 7/30/18)

“Study Estimates Bernie Sanders’ ‘Medicare for All’ Plan to Cost $32.6 Trillion” (MSN.com, 7/30/18)

A number of major media outlets also re-published a story by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the Associated Press (7/30/18) that focused on the study:

“‘Medicare for All’ Would Cost $32.6 Trillion Over 10 Years, Study Says” (Bloomberg, 7/30/18)

“Study: ‘Medicare for All’ Projected to Cost $32.6 Trillion” (ABC News, 7/30/18)

“Study: ‘Medicare for All’ Plan Touted by Bernie Sanders Would Cost $32.6 Trillion” (CBS News, 7/30/18)

“Study: ‘Medicare for All’ Bill Estimated at $32.6 Trillion” (Miami Herald, 7/30/18)

“’Medicare for All’ Could Cost $32.6 Trillion, George Mason Study Says” (Time, 7/30/18)

However, these scary headlines missed an important point in Blahous’ study: In terms of total (federal, state and private) spending on healthcare, Sanders’ Medicare for All plan is actually projected to cost $2.1 trillion less than projections of spending under the current US healthcare system.

Yet a cursory glance at Blahous’ study would not show this immediately. Blahous obscured his own findings by not displaying the ten-year totals for Medicare for All cost savings in his tables. As Matt Bruenig, head of the People’s Policy Project think tank, pointed out in Jacobin (7/30/18), adding up all the values for Medicare for All cost savings from 2022–31 in Table 2 of Blahous’ study shows that enacting Medicare for All would actually save $2.1 trillion in national health expenditures over that period. It’s as if Blahous saw the results of his data and didn’t like them, so he just decided to not publicize them in his table.

While the AP story (7/30/18) did acknowledge the cost savings (with caveats on whether doctors and hospitals would accept rates commensurate to that of Medicare on a larger scale), most of the articles did not address Medicare for All cost-saving explicitly. The article by Axios (7/30/18) buries this same lede in the bottom of its “worth noting” section:

All told, “Medicare for All” would actually slightly reduce the total amount we pay for healthcare. But the plan would increase the share of that cost paid through taxes, rather than through insurance premiums or out of pocket

Blahous’ omission makes sense, given the small-government, market-centered political ideology of the Mercatus Center, which is funded primarily by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, who have given at least $9 million to the think tank and tens of millions to George Mason University. The organization was originally founded in 1980 by Richard Fink, a former executive vice president of Koch Industries, and both he and Charles Koch currently sit on its board of directors. Blahous, also a member of the Walton and Scaife family-funded Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has long warned about the supposed fiscal strain of Social Security and other “entitlement” programs, though at other times he’s seemed to contradict his dire appraisal.