WASHINGTON, D.C.–It isn’t often that federal officials admit to inconvenient truths – but this latest admission is pretty direct: Scrapping corporate health care would boost the economy, benefit workers, and increase longevity.
Those are just some of the findings from the Republican-led Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in a new report that reveals how the current corporate-run health care system is impoverishing millions of Americans – and how “Medicare for All™” could quickly fix the disaster.
After all, this worked so swimmingly with the Affordable Care Act, why not Double Down? Although this seems to be a good idea on the surface, perhaps we should approach it with a little more suspicion.
Consider the analysis in its own words if that sounds overblown.
According to the CBO, a single-payer health system would:
“Households’ health insurance premiums would be eliminated, and their out-of-pocket health care costs would decline. Administrative expenses in the health care sector would reduce,, freeing up productive resources for other sectors and ultimately increasing economy-wide productivity…
Longevity and labor productivity would increase as people’s health outcomes improved.
“Workers would choose to work fewer hours, on average, despite higher wages because the reduction in health insurance premiums and (out-of-pocket) expenses would generate a positive wealth effect that allowed households to spend their time on activities other than paid work and maintain the same standard of living.”
(Sorry, I’ve heard that one before; let me go get on my “Gum’Ment Reform” boots…)
But they don’t stop with just that level of sunshine:
“That wealth effect would boost households’ disposable income, which they could then split between increased saving and non-health consumption. Although hours worked per capita would decline, the effect on GDP would be offset under most policy specifications by an increase in economy-wide productivity, an increase in the size of the labor force, an increase in the average worker’s labor productivity, and a rise in the capital stock.”
Yay-put in less, get out more. Who wants to argue with that?
“States could respond to the (ensuing) budget surplus by growing their rainy-day funds (at least temporarily), reducing state tax rates, increasing spending on government purchases or public services, or a combination of all three.”
According to the findings of the report, the existing system of employer-based, corporate-run healthcare locks “non-rich™” people into working more and more hours just to afford ever-higher insurance coverage and medical care costs.
Indeed, CBO declares that under a single-payer system, households would “retire at younger ages” and “hours worked would be lower for most households across the income distribution.” Under the five single-payer scenarios the agency evaluated, a “reduction in hours worked would be largest among lower- and middle-income households because those groups would see the largest percentage increase in wage rates and reductions in (out-of-pocket) expenses and premiums.”
(Spoiler Alert: as take-home wages went up it is reasonable to presume that a jump to the next tax bracket might also occur)
CBO’s report seems to paint these forecasts as a warning – but they are actually good news. Studies have long shown that on average, Americans work longer hours than their international counterparts, and they receive among the smallest amounts of vacation and paid leave.
In effect, the CBO admits that the corporate health care system contributes to that problem.
A CBO analysis of health care options checks out more robust coverage for home- and community-based care, which enables patients to live independently for longer periods of time. Increasing funding would not only increase eligibility and expand those services for patients, but would also increase salaries for home health aides, who are among the lowest paid workers in the economy.
In spite of all the benefits of single-payer health care outlined by CBO, Medicare for All remains stuck in a political system where stakeholders in the existing corporate health care system spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy elections and public policy.
As evidence of that influence, in, in the most recent presidential election Joe Biden kicked off his campaign with a fundraiser with a health insurance CEO, and then promised to veto Medicare for All legislation if it came to his desk. He instead touted his proposal of incorporating public insurance into the Affordable Care Act.
Although Biden hasn’t promoted that public option as president – he even omitted it from his budget plan last year, he and Democratic leaders have instead adopted health insurance lobbyists’ proposals to subsidize the cost of for-profit health insurance.
More recently, California’s effort to create the nation’s first single-payer system was thwarted by corporate interests in a state where most residents revile that corporate interests went to the forefront in a state where an overwhelming majority of voters believe the government should prioritize ensuring that all residents have health insurance. Democrat lawmakers killed single-payer shortly after getting a $1 million check from a major private health insurer.
Despite those setbacks, the new CBO report is an important warning about establishment hostility against common sense health care policies.
It is hardly a sanctuary for left-wing utopianism, and the federal government rarely ever admits such harsh truths about the status quo – particularly those that emphasize the kind of changes other nations have long since made.