More Myths About Bernie’s Medicare-for-All Plan
There's a rumor going around that Bernie Sanders's Medicare-for-All plan would cut provider payments by 40 percent. It's an absolute lie.
Medicare-for-All buttons displayed at a health screening in Los Angeles on July 10, 2012. David McNew / Getty
I have probably written too many pieces about the Mercatus Medicare-for-All study (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), but I am nonetheless not done yet.
One of the claims that keeps popping up in the coverage of the study is that the Sanders plan would cut provider payments by 40 percent. This is absolutely untrue, and the study does not say this. Although the report’s author, Charles Blahous, conveniently omitted the actual provider payment cut, a reverse-engineering of his tables indicates that it is only 10.6 percent, not 40 percent.
A Completely Absurd Figure
Before getting into how I arrive at the 10.6 percent estimate, it is useful to emphasize that the claim that Sanders’s plan cuts provider payments by 40 percent is so absurd that you would have to be innumerate to think it was true.
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