Price tag of Bernie Sanders’ proposals: $18 Trillion

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The WSJ is making up numbers out of nowhere about Sanders? Hillary supporters can stop claiming she's the only one being attacked now.

[Lief 🗽]

The WSJ is making up numbers out of nowhere about Sanders? Hillary supporters can stop claiming she's the only one being attacked now.

Er, no, these numbers were provided by the Sanders campaign.

[ElectionsGuy]

So his tax hikes, according to WSJ, only cover 36% of his spending hikes over a decade? Joke candidate.

This is why I cannot understand so called libertarians and people like Jesse Ventura supporting him.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The WSJ is making up numbers out of nowhere about Sanders? Hillary supporters can stop claiming she's the only one being attacked now.

Er, no, these numbers were provided by the Sanders campaign.

Are we talking about this thing? I'm not sure this is actually from the Sanders campaign.  And you'll notice the actual cost for the healthcare is $15 billion - $32 billion = - $17 billion. But again, I'm not sure there's anything specific to Sanders here. Also interesting is that Hillary's SuperPAC she's coordinate with decided to attack Sanders for single payer the same time this WSJ hit job came out.

[Lief 🗽]

From what I understand, the bottom (spending) is from the WSJ, while the top (savings) was made by a disgruntled Sanders supporter.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

From what I understand, the bottom (spending) is from the WSJ, while the top (savings) was made by a disgruntled Sanders supporter.

It seems the $15 trillion is from some random House bill from 2 years ago.

[sparkey]

Are we talking about this thing? I'm not sure this is actually from the Sanders campaign.  And you'll notice the actual cost for the healthcare is $15 billion - $32 billion = - $17 billion.

The "Fed Funds" part of the graphic is from the Wall Street Journal, and is more or less accurate, with some of its numbers coming from the Sanders campaign itself, along with the SSA and a UMass Amherst study: http://www.wsj.com/articles/price-tag-of-bernie-sanders-proposals-18-trillion-1442271511

The "Cost Savings" part of the graphic is from a Sanders supporter on Reddit who doesn't really understand how this all works: https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/3l1cz6/hey_wall_street_journal_ftfy_in_response_to_18/

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Are we talking about this thing? I'm not sure this is actually from the Sanders campaign.  And you'll notice the actual cost for the healthcare is $15 billion - $32 billion = - $17 billion.

The "Fed Funds" part of the graphic is from the Wall Street Journal, and is more or less accurate, with some of its numbers coming from the Sanders campaign itself, along with the SSA and a UMass Amherst study: http://www.wsj.com/articles/price-tag-of-bernie-sanders-proposals-18-trillion-1442271511

The "Cost Savings" part of the graphic is from a Sanders supporter on Reddit who doesn't really understand how this all works: https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/3l1cz6/hey_wall_street_journal_ftfy_in_response_to_18/

Well, it wasn't taking into account savings, and the Sanders campaign will be responding.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/bernie-sanders-18-trillion-new-spending-wall-street-journal-213639#ixzz3lpTBtmJ4

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

This is why I cannot understand so called libertarians and people like Jesse Ventura supporting him.

This campaign stopped being about policy a long time ago.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Yes. Remember anything the any of the candidates say at this stage is pretty much in the realm of fantasy, it's more just to throw out their own particular favoured policies to drum up support for later lobbying. No candidate's economic plan will be implemented fully - both parties will sort of amalgamate their candidate's best polling policies to form a concrete policy, of which the winner will be cautiously presented and smashed up, distorted and altered by Congress till something vaguely resembling the initial plan is proposed.

In particular, single-payer would have to be passed with some sort of major right-wing concession. Perhaps it would be paid for via a national GST - a national sales tax being one of the right's wet dreams. (Other revenue raising ideas - Financial Transaction Tax, wealth tax, LVT - would be a bigger dream for lefties, but hardly feasible in the presumed congress the next POTUS would be saddled with.)

[Flake]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/09/15/no-bernie-sanders-is-not-going-to-bankrupt-america-to-the-tune-of-18-trillion/

[Kingpoleon]

European countries can afford the healthcare programs they have in large part due to not needing to pay much on defense because of the U.S.

A tiresome myth, that keeps getting repeated around here.

1) There is no objective need for Western countries to uphold a collective military superiority on the level we have now. There is amble room for US defence cuts in many areas (the Navy would be an obvious place to start, tanks is another).

2) What possible military threats that Europe can not handle ourselves are you "protecting" us against? Russia could not pull off a military invasion of Western and Central Europe + Britain and France have nuclear forces as deterrence.

"Let's cut, cut, cut

Cut cut the soldiers

Make them veterans!

We're gonna cut cut cut

Cut cut the sailors!"

[Bigby]

It's good to see even Democrats calling out Sanders for economic stupidity. And this is why I refuse to vote for him at the end of the day, even if he is pro-gun, against open borders, and honest.

[King]

jfern, since this is just a hitpiece, how much do you think instituting a single payer health care system, making all college education free, and rebuilding national infrastructure is going to cost both in dollar amount for the new system and the economic losses from layoffs in the old system's demise?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

jfern, since this is just a hitpiece, how much do you think instituting a single payer health care system, making all college education free, and rebuilding national infrastructure is going to cost both in dollar amount for the new system and the economic losses from layoffs in the old system's demise?

There's no way that single payer is $15 trillion in new spending.

[King]

jfern, since this is just a hitpiece, how much do you think instituting a single payer health care system, making all college education free, and rebuilding national infrastructure is going to cost both in dollar amount for the new system and the economic losses from layoffs in the old system's demise?

There's no way that single payer is $15 trillion in new spending.

The current system, as that stupid graphic notes as savings, currently is going to cost $32 trillion over the next 10. If anything, $15 trillion for the entire US system sounds like a low number, unless we really believe single payer will cost less than half than our current model.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

jfern, since this is just a hitpiece, how much do you think instituting a single payer health care system, making all college education free, and rebuilding national infrastructure is going to cost both in dollar amount for the new system and the economic losses from layoffs in the old system's demise?

There's no way that single payer is $15 trillion in new spending.

The current system, as that stupid graphic notes as savings, currently is going to cost $32 trillion over the next 10. If anything, $15 trillion for the entire US system sounds like a low number, unless we really believe single payer will cost less than half than our current model.

True, it could save some, but probably not that much. It certainly won't be a net cost of $15 trillion.  It's clear that most countries have better healthcare systems than ours, and despite their tending to have much lower amounts of private healthcare spending, the US government basically spends more than almost any other country's government per capita.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I imagine the costs would go down if such preventative procedures as cholesterol checks, cancer screenings, jabs etc. were free, no?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I imagine the costs would go down if such preventative procedures as cholesterol checks, cancer screenings, jabs etc. were free, no?

Yes, preventative care has the potential to be a fair amount cheaper than having the uninsured have huge ER bills that they don't pay.

[Averroës Nix]

I imagine the costs would go down if such preventative procedures as cholesterol checks, cancer screenings, jabs etc. were free, no?

Not likely. The cost savings potential of preventive medicine has been incredibly oversold over the past decade and (in general) optimistically assumes all kinds of resulting behavioral changes that, in reality, rarely take place. (And let's not even mention the over-treatment and over-diagnosis issues...)

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Sanders' "savings plan" is comparable to Google presenting its shareholders with a plan to lay off all the employees and then counting their previous salaries as "profit". As if corporations, upon seeing one of their tax loopholes has been closed, just go "Well you got us Bernie, we'll pay vastly higher tax rates now since you found our only loophole"

[King]

I imagine the costs would go down if such preventative procedures as cholesterol checks, cancer screenings, jabs etc. were free, no?

They already are under ACA.

[Simfan34]

It's more economically literate than J. Bush's tax proposal (and most coverage thereof), at least. Or, God forbid, any of Paul Ryan's budgets.

Obviously you're not going to get cogent, nuanced policy analysis from a visualization that fits on an index card.

Yes, but at least in those cases the worst one can claim is that the "numbers don't add up". Here, they're not even using the right numbers. They appear to be using the using the total amount of money spent on healthcare per year-- which is around $3.2 trillion per year-- rather than government spending on healthcare-- which is something around $1.1 trillion. They've grossly distorted the fiscal arithmetic here. The government cannot save money it was not spending in the first place.

And what exactly are the proposing to "calm markets" that's going to be bringing such revenues? A FTT? If so, the figures given are outlandish.

[Oak Hills]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/09/15/no-bernie-sanders-is-not-going-to-bankrupt-america-to-the-tune-of-18-trillion/

The most relevant paragraphs therefrom:

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Also:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

https://theintercept.com/2015/09/15/wall-street-journals-scary-bernie-sanders-price-tag-ignores-health-savings/

Jesus Christ, I expected libertarians and Republicans to fall for this kind of budget scaremongering, but I can't believe "Democrats" are falling for scaremongering about something as basic and ubiquitous as f[inks]in' single-payer healthcare.

[Simfan34]

Also, if the $32 trillion figure is all current healthcare spending, does the $15 trillion figure include existing medicare expenditures?

Also the obvious question of the feasibility of halving healthcare spending with a single-payee system has to be asked. While I'm not writing off the possibility of significant savings, it deserves saying that the United States, as is, spends roughly the same proportion of its GDP on social welfare as Canada and Australia for a far less comprehensive welfare system. It's likely we'd pay more relative to other countries for a single payer system, too.

On a fundamental level it is silly for anyone to claim this would be a revenue neutral proposal. Any single payer system would be funded by an increase in taxes. On an individual level this would mean an end to premiums, but I suspect the bulk of savings would go to firms, which I'd hazard would not pass on the savings to their employees to any significant degree. If so this would likely result in individuals having to pay more, as the saved premium would be smaller than the increase in tax.