Sen. Sanders’s healthcare proposal will cost $3 trillion over 10 years. Sanders admitted in news interviews this week that he does not have a plan to pay that tab.
The Third Way poll did not ask whether the voters would support a public option, which is part of former Vice President Joe Biden’s plan. Biden’s public option would make a Medicare-like program available to all who want it while providing health-insurance subsidies to more middle-class families who are currently ineligible, without destroying the private health insurance market.
The poll did find, however, that supporters of a progressive, government-run health care proposal argue that middle-class Americans will end up saving money because the elimination of premiums and deductibles will more than cancel out the increased taxes they would have to pay.
That sentiment is being echoed by more progressive financial advisors. “With lower administrative costs, overall healthcare costs should go down by around 25%, as that is how much is spent on administrative costs now,” Alan Moskowitz, founder of Transformative Wealth Management LLC, a registered investment advisor firm in El Cerrito, Calif., told Financial Advisor Magazine.
“Another extremely important fact is that although we pay around twice what other countries pay for healthcare, our level of healthy outcomes is only around the middle of the pack compared to other countries,” he added. “So we're not getting a good deal now.”
Sanders and Warren have admitted that their proposals would all but eliminate the private insurance market, forcing more than 100 million Americans to surrender their private insurance in favor of a Medicare system that will be expanded to cover more than 300 million people.
Biden asserted at an AARP rally in Iowa that the progressive plans would fundamentally change the quality of healthcare coverage consumers currently receive under Medicare in an unpredictable, “risky” way.
“Medicare goes away, it’s a new Medicare system,” Biden said. “It may be as good, you may like it as well, it may or may not, but the transition of dropping 300 million people on a totally new plan I think is a little risky at this point.”