Thread by @AbdulElSayed

By now, you've heard about the @thelancet analysis from @yalesph led by @Alison_Galvani with some rather impressive, predictable top-line findings:

#Medicareforall would save:
$458 Billion/year (13%)
68,500 lives/year

But let's dig in. A thread 1/
thelancet.com/journals/lance…

Let's look at the cost estimates first.

They built a model called "single-payer healthcare interactive financing tool" which allows users to toggle between various assumptions about the savings, costs, revenue w/ #MedicareforAll. Check it out:

2/
shift.cidma.us

Savings:
- Reducing Pharmaceutical prices (by negotiating)
- Reducing Hospital prices (by setting them lower)
- Reducing clinical service prices (by setting them lower)
- Reducing overhead (Medicare's overhead is ~2%, private insurance is ~15%)
- Reducing fraud

3/

Revenue:
- Payroll tax
- Household income tax
- Wealth tax

Cost increases:
- Increasing healthcare use among those who were uninsured (the whole point)
- Increasing use among those who were underinsured (ppl who use less healthcare than they need because of bad insurance)

4/

You can create different scenarios by toggling between various funding levels (i.e. raising more money via wealth tax or business tax; OR different levels of cost reductions through hospital or clinical rates).

But using best evidence for each, they find $458B in savings.

5/

Under their scenario, which includes a 10% payroll tax on businesses and 5% household tax

THE AVERAGE FAMILY SAVES $2369 a year--or 4% of their annual earnings.

And employers would save $10 billion across the economy.

Even more conservative estimates yield net savings.

6/

More importantly the lives saved are a function of simply adjusting the mortality rates of those who are under- and uninsured--who suffer 40% higher mortality--to those who are insured.

That's how they get the 68,500 lives saved. That's also 1.73 million life years.

7/

Interestingly, they estimate the number of additional lives LOST if the ACA were to be repealed at 38,500 lives.

That means that M4A would save nearly 2x as many lives as the ACA--on TOP OF the ACA.

W/o #m4a, we're leaving nearly 2x as many lives on the table to save

8/

They also consider the transition to #MedicareforAll, and they estimate that the savings from #m4a could fund the full cost of the worker transition program in just 2 years.

Given the increase in the demand for healthcare, there will be man jobs created in the industry

9/

So, what did the @thelancet study show? #MedicareForAll

1) saves 68500 lives/yr
2) Saves the average family $2500/yr
3) Saves business $100 billion/yr
4) Saves the economy $458 billion/yr
5) Can pay for the jobs transition

But that was really never the question, was it?

10/

The question is whether we, as a society, are willing to move beyond the fear-mongering of the insurance industry and their political puppets who tell us that #M4A will take away our choice, will cost us too much money, will leave us w/o healthcare" and do the right thing.

11/

The 68,500 ppl who will die every year w/o it are counting on us. And this year, we have that opportunity.

I do hope we'll take it.

It means electing @BernieSanders #POTUS, yes. But it also means organizing in our communities, talking to our friends/neighbors/coworkers

12/

And electing pro #MedicareforAll candidates up and own the ballots through orgs like @m4a_now and @SouthpawMI in communities around the country.

I hope we'll take it. The time is NOW.