The Koch-backed Mercatus Institute was humiliated last month when it published a scare story claiming that American couldn’t afford the $32.6 trillion cost of universal health care for the next decade, a number that seems huge until you realize that the cost of privatized US health care over the same period will be $2 trillion higher.
Understanding the difference requires that you abandon the simplistic notion that a sovereign nation with its own currency is like a household with a credit-card; in Modern Monetary Theory, we think of money and debt in very different ways.
JD Alt’s essay, How to Calculate the Costs of #MedicareForAll Properly, delves into good detail on how MMT would cost out Medicare for All, but really, here’s everything you need to know:
The actual macro-economic bookkeeping for Medicare-for-all, then, is this:1. Uncle Sam spends $3.3 trillion to pay for America’s health services;
2. U.S. families and businesses save $3.3 trillion by not having to spend it for their health-care;
3. The health-care industry earns $3.3 trillion by providing services;
4. The U.S. financial sector owns $3.3 trillion in treasury bond “savings accounts.”
How to Calculate the Costs of #MedicareForAll Properly [JD Alt/Naked Capitalism]