That is one view, based on estimates.
There are other views.
Would ‘Medicare for All’ Save Billions or Cost Billions?
The NYT article sums it up succinctly when it said:
"All of these estimates looked at the potential health care bill under a Sanders-style Medicare for all plan. In some estimates, the country would not pay more for health care, but there would still be a drastic shift in who is doing the paying. Individuals and their employers now pay nearly half of the total cost of medical care, but that percentage would fall close to zero, and the percentage paid by the federal government would rise to compensate. Even under Mr. Blahous’s lower estimate, which assumes a reduction in overall health care spending, federal spending on health care would still increase by 10 percent of G.D.P., or more than triple what the government spends on the military.
How that transfer takes place is one of the least well explained parts of the reform proposals. Taxation is the most obvious way to collect that extra revenue, but so far none of the current Medicare for all proposals have included a detailed tax plan. Even
if total medical spending stayed flat over all, some taxpayers could come out ahead and pay less; others could find themselves paying more.
Raising revenue would require broad tax increases that are likely to be
partly borne by the middle class, potentially impeding passage. Advocates, including Mr. Sanders, tend to favor funding the program with payroll taxes.
For some people, any increase in federal taxes might be more than offset by reductions in their spending on premiums, co-payments, deductibles and state taxes. There is evidence to suggest that premium savings by employers would also be returned to workers in the form of higher salaries. But, depending on the details, other groups could end up paying more in tax increases than they save in those reductions.
After Mr. Sanders’s presidential campaign released a tax proposal in 2016, the Urban Institute tried to calculate the effects on different groups.
But it found that the proposed taxes would pay for only about half of the increased federal bill. That means that a real financing proposal would probably need to raise a lot more in taxes. How those are spread across the population would change who would be better or worse off under Medicare for all."
So, contrary to the widely popular belief, it is not necessarily true "cost would go down on a per person basis."
History provides a proper basis for the incredulity that Medicare for All would result in "cost would go down on a per person basis." Medicare and Medicaid estimates were, perhaps inevitably, proven inaccurate, by a meager 58 billion for a specific component of Medicare, a drop in the bucket of 86 billion for the entire cost of Medicare, and a 16 billion dollar miscalculation for relief payments to hospitals under Medicaid.
But even ignoring the miscalculated estimates regarding Medicaid and Medicare, too often politicians have passed legislation with spending cuts, increased spending for some program, creations of new programs, promising lower costs, promising this will not result adding to the deficit or result in a tax hike, and the opposite has occurred. Medicare for All is going to cost A LOT of money. A LOW ESTIMATE of Medicare For All would approximately result in "
federal spending on health care would still increase by 10 percent of G.D.P., or more than triple what the government spends on the military," and that is despite "
Mr. Blahous’s lower estimate, which assumes a reduction in overall health care spending." This will be paid for by taxes.
Until Bernie provides the meticulous details of how he is going to pay for Medicare for All, while resulting in the middle class paying less for healthcare, I will remain skeptical, and justifiably so.
