Price tag of Bernie Sanders’ proposals: $18 Trillion

[Celebi]

Basically, Sanders' plan has two parts: $15 trillion on healthcare and $3 trillion on everything else. The $3 trillion on everything else is a good plan and roughly comparable to the Republicans' various deficit-growing tax cut plans. And then the healthcare plan is pie-in-the-sky nonsense.

Why would be the healthcare plan that exists in every other first world country and usually works significantly better and more efficient then the current US system "pie-in-the-sky nonsense"?

[Mr. Morden]

Basically, Sanders' plan has two parts: $15 trillion on healthcare and $3 trillion on everything else. The $3 trillion on everything else is a good plan and roughly comparable to the Republicans' various deficit-growing tax cut plans. And then the healthcare plan is pie-in-the-sky nonsense.

Why would be the healthcare plan that exists in every other first world country and usually works significantly better and more efficient then the current US system "pie-in-the-sky nonsense"?

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-30/single-payer-would-make-health-care-worse

[Torie]

Basically, Sanders' plan has two parts: $15 trillion on healthcare and $3 trillion on everything else. The $3 trillion on everything else is a good plan and roughly comparable to the Republicans' various deficit-growing tax cut plans. And then the healthcare plan is pie-in-the-sky nonsense.

Why would be the healthcare plan that exists in every other first world country and usually works significantly better and more efficient then the current US system "pie-in-the-sky nonsense"?

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-30/single-payer-would-make-health-care-worse

Fascinating article that. We have an expensive infrastructure and spending imbedded into the system that creates a constituency. One thing the article missed is that the US spends more for drugs I think because the US paying higher prices tends to subsidize drug research for the planet, and other nations freeload off of that.

[Simfan34]

Basically, Sanders' plan has two parts: $15 trillion on healthcare and $3 trillion on everything else. The $3 trillion on everything else is a good plan and roughly comparable to the Republicans' various deficit-growing tax cut plans. And then the healthcare plan is pie-in-the-sky nonsense.

Why would be the healthcare plan that exists in every other first world country and usually works significantly better and more efficient then the current US system "pie-in-the-sky nonsense"?

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-30/single-payer-would-make-health-care-worse

Very interesting article that verifies my assumption-- that we'd end up paying more for less. We already are, apparently- since we're already spending a portion of our GDP on government health programs comparable to what other countries are paying for their entire single-payer programs.

[Averroës Nix]

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.

The tax-cuts-as-performance-art bit to which I'm referring doesn't bother to use plausible numbers, either, but my point is that, whoever made it, pro-Sanders or anti-, the visualizations simply do not make sense. There's no point in even trying to engage with it as a serious series of policy ideas. "Calming markets" is literally nonsense and the number may as well be $3 quadrillion for all that it means.