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“Overall then, as Table 18 shows, our bottom-line figure for all existing public funding sources available to finance Medicare for All is $1.88 trillion (rounded down from $1.884 trillion). This figure includes, again, 1) all available public insurance funds; 2) funds now provided for other public third-party payers; and 3) federal tax subsidies as well as health insurance spending on federal government employees.

“Given our estimate that the costs of providing universal coverage under Medicare for All would be $2.93 trillion in 2017, we can then conclude that, for the U.S. economy as of 2017, we would need to raise an additional $1.05 trillion in new taxes to fully fund Medicare for All. We show our simple derivation of this figure in Table 19.

“Of course, these new tax revenues would not constitute a net additional cost or spending burden on the U.S. economy. These funds would rather be serving to substitute for the loss of revenue into the U.S. health care system that presently come from existing private revenue sources— i.e. primarily private health insurance and out-of-pocket expenditures. These private revenue sources would no longer operate.”

Source: Pollin R, Heintz J, Arno P, Wicks-Lim J, Ash M. Economic analysis of Medicare for All. Research report. Political Economics Research Institute. 30 November 2018.
www.peri.umass.edu/publication/item/1127-economic-analysis-of-medicare-for-all 

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