Thread by @wendellpotter

.@TianaTheFirst seems to have some questions for Medicare for All advocates to answer. They sound eerily similar to the talking points I used to write for the health insurance industry, so I’m happy to help! (Thread)

I’ll start at the beginning. This estimate is less “conservative” (small c) and more “Conservative” (big C). It comes from the libertarian/Koch funded “think tank” @mercatus

When I was working for the health insurance industry, we considered these right-wing think tanks our business partners. They got plenty of funding, and we got plenty of research that worked out in our favor. More on that here:

tarbell.org/2018/08/how-co…

The good news is, even making some pretty absurd assumptions about cost, Mercatus still found that #medicareforall would save $2 trillion over 10 years compared to current healthcare spending.

businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders…

Next, another classic industry line: Medicare for All would freeze innovation. A few points on this:

1. It would still be extremely profitable for pharmaceutical companies to innovate new and improved treatments under Medicare for All.

2. Pharmaceutical companies spend some money on research and development, but they spend way more on marketing those drugs (usually directly at physicians who are doing the prescribing)
washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2…

3. R&D spending also includes things like:
Buying patents from smaller companies to market as their own.

Developing drugs that do essentially the same thing as drugs already on the market (they don’t need to prove it’s an improvement at all)

4. The NIH, public universities, and other tax payer funded programs do much of the fundamental research that pharmaceutical companies base their developments on. Then we get charged twice as much as the rest of the world. We’re being double charged.

For argument’s sake, let’s accept the price estimate from Mercatus is valid. Medicare for All is still cheaper than our current healthcare spending, and the vast majority of us will be paying less. It would also not require “doubling our tax revenue”

I’ve seen this line a a lot in conservative publications lately. It ignores that the federal government already spends over a trillion a year on healthcare. Plus there’s the money state governments spend on Medicaid programs. The difference in what we’d need to spend isn’t huge.

Finally, the industry’s favorite line: wait times. I’ll start with this. If you walk in an ER needing emergency surgery or you have cancer or some other problem that will get worse the longer you wait, you get care in Canada right away.

commonwealthfund.org/publications/p…

It is true that for some non-urgent or elective procedures, wait times can be a bit longer in Canada than the US (especially in areas with fewer doctors, hospitals, etc).

However, that’s largely because everyone who needs treatment in Canada actually gets it. Unlike in the US, where many people ration treatment or medications because of cost.

If you have the money, you can get a hip surgery very quickly in the US! But that’s because so few people can afford the bill. Many people opt not to see specialists or get preventative care, which often makes their medical issues worse/more expensive to treat.

If opponents of Medicare for All have a valid critique, I’d love to hear it. But until then, they’re just parroting spin from the industry at the expense of our health and well-being.