As economists, we understand that a single-payer “Medicare for All” health insurance system for the U.S. can finance good-quality care for all U.S. residents as a basic right, while still significantly reducing overall health care spending relative to the current exorbitant and wasteful system.
Health care is not a service that follows standard market rules. It should therefore be provided as a public good.
Evidence from around the world demonstrates that publicly financed health care systems result in improved health outcomes, lower costs, and greater equity. As of 2017, the U.S. spent $3.3 trillion annually on health care. This equaled 17 percent of U.S. GDP, with average spending at about $10,000 per person.
By contrast, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, the U.K., Australia, Spain, and Italy spent between 9-11 percent of GDP on health care, averaging $3,400 to $5,700 per person. Yet average health outcomes in all of these countries are superior to those in the United States. In all of these countries, the public sector is predominant in financing health care.
For these reasons, the time is now to create a universal, single-payer, Medicare for All health care system in the United States. Public financing for health is not a matter of raising new money for health care, but of reducing total health care outlays and distributing payments more equitably and efficiently. Implementing a unified single-payer system would reduce administrative costs and eliminate individuals’ and employers’ insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
If combined with public control of drug prices and a dramatically simplified global budgeting system, a sensible Medicare financing system would reduce health care costs while guaranteeing access to comprehensive care and financial security to all.
As such, we support publicly and equitably financed health care through a Medicare for All system at the federal level, as described in H.R. 1384 and S. 1129. We encourage Congress to move forward with implementing a public financed Medicare for All plan to achieve the equitable and affordable universal health care system that the American people need.
James K. Boyce
Gerald Epstein
Nancy Folbre
Gerald Friedman
Eric Hoyt
Katherine A. Moos
Robert Pollin
These University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty signed the letter, along with numerous faculty at other institutions across the country.