Sanders has a very vague and unreasonable healthcare policy proposal. He often compares the healthcare offered in the US to that offered in other nations. It's actually very hard to do a comparison like that since there so many variables you'd have to control and the fact at how wildly different the systems are. He often says that Americans pay more for healthcare than any other advanced nation but they aren't any healthier for it as his main reason for reform. The thing is that we can't compare health outcomes between countries as a measure of healthcare efficacy, there are simply more significant biases than healthcare efficacy in advanced economies. One thing Sanders fails to ever mention when talking about costs of healthcare is that most Americans (poor Americans especially) will buy brand-name medication instead of generic which inflates the overall cost of care.[1] [2] Americans actually pay less for many generics than a good part of the world including Canada.[3] While many might not have the same access to healthcare options due to a lack of funds the US has one of the most diverse healthcare options, notably in terms of in- and out-patient care, and prescriptions. Senator Sanders also believes in eliminating co-pays, deductibles, and the like. This belief highlights the key problem with his proposal. How do you control costs? Cost-sharing disincentives consumers/patients from going to see their doctor for a cold as well as incentives them to purchase generic medication over brand.[4] [5] The biggest challenge universal healthcare faces is controlling costs and Sanders makes no attempt to expand on how he would do it. Actually he avoids it.
According to Bernie: "Most importantly, health care provided by employers is compensation that is not subject to payroll taxes or income taxes under current law. This is a significant tax break that would effectively disappear under this plan because all Americans would receive health care through the new single-payer program instead of employer-based health care."
It's important to note due to the extremely high threshold to qualify for the credit its barely used at all. The majority of this revenue would come from higher effective rates elsewhere. Two points on this: It assumes that employers would simply increase wages immediately to account for the fall in non-cash compensation cost, which it wouldn't AND this is a tax increase on labour not on capital.
He wants to pay for this by having employers pay 6.2% claiming this won't have any effect on employees. It's as if not one of his advisers have taken Econ101. Introducing a tax on either the employee or the employer will impact the other. In fact the employee is impacted the most even if the employer is the only one directly paying the tax.[6]
The good Senator is appealing to the uninformed young voters who don't know that he is simply pandering to them.