• dragontamer@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    By having free healthcare for all you actually save money if basically no other change is made.

    https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2022-02/57637-Single-Payer-Systems.pdf

    In this analysis, we found that economic output would be between 0.3 percent lower and 1.8 percent higher than the benchmark economy 10 years after the single-payer system was implemented, without incorporating the effects of financing the system. Under a single-payer system, workers would choose to work fewer hours, on average, despite higher wages because the reduction in health insurance premiums and OOP 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. If the system was financed with an income or payroll tax, gross domestic product (GDP) would be between approximately 1.0 percent and 10 percent lower by 2030, depending on the specification of the single-payer system and the details of the financing policy.

    Sounds like we pay by having a loss of GDP measured between 1% to 10%. That’s rather substantial.

    CBO is the non-partisan accountants of the US Senate/House. They are our best estimate on the true costs of various programs.

      • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        That’s cool and all, but GDP is related to… You guessed it. Inflation.

        I recognize that Republicans overemphasized GDP but it’s a chief metric for a reason. If our top line GDP drops it will absolutely be a problem.

        If you want to bring up easy inflation gremlins into your argument, be my guest. But inflation is already a weak point for Democrats and I expect y’all to get hammered on it even harder moving forward.