A new analysis of the economic impact of a Medicare for All health care reform, like the signature policy proposal of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, suggests that such a plan would not only increase wages for workers but also create additional jobs.
Sanders, a progressive senator from Vermont who is currently a close second to former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic frontrunner, has long advocated for a universal or single-payer health care system. Critics argue that such a policy would lead to mass job loss and be an economic drain on the country, but the new analysis published Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) suggests the opposite would happen.
Josh Bivens, EPI’s director who conducted the study, wrote in the report that Medicare for All “would be unambiguously positive” for the labor market in the U.S., leading to a “boost in wages and salaries” as well as an “increase in job quality, while producing “a net increase in jobs.”
Although the analysis notes that policymakers should not “ignore the distress caused by job transitions” due to such a health care reform, Bivens wrote that job losses during a transitional period would be “relatively small.”
“Despite the fact that M4A [Medicare for All] could deliver these large benefits to efficient labor market functioning, the policy often comes under fire from critics making highly exaggerated claims about the potential job loss that could occur under such a reform,” Bivens noted.
“The grain of truth in some of the claims is that, like any productivity improvement, the adoption of a reform like M4A would require the redeployment of workers from one sector (the health insurance and medical billing complex) to other sectors (mostly the delivery of health care),” he wrote. “But there is little in the M4A-induced redeployment of workers that would greatly stress the American labor market over and above the uncertainty and churn that characterizes this labor market every year.”
Wendell Potter, a former health insurance vice president who left the industry and now advocates for health care reform, told Newsweek that the analysis undermines a key argument the private insurance industry uses to push back against Medicare for all. Continue Reading>>
