
<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Peoples Policy ProjectSeptember 12, 2019</span><div class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><br class=""></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Medicare for All Would Cut Poverty</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">by Over 20 PercentBy Matt Bruenig</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">The Census released its annual income, poverty, and health insurance</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">statistics earlier this week. The summary report shows that 8 million of</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">the nation’s 42.5 million poor people would not be poor if they did not</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">have to pay medical out-of-pocket (MOOP) expenses like deductibles,</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">copays,</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">coinsurance, and self-payments. Medicare for All (M4A) virtually</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">eliminates</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">these kinds of payments, meaning that these 8 million people (18.8 percent</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">of all poor people) would find themselves lifted over the poverty</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">threshold</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">if M4A were enacted.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">This headcount poverty measure actually understates how significant MOOP</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">expenses are to poverty in this country. According to this same data, in</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">2018, the total poverty gap stood at $175.8 billion. This figure is</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">derived</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">by calculating how far each poor family’s income is below the poverty</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">line and then adding those calculations together to get an aggregate</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">amount. MOOP expenses make up $38.2 billion of that total gap, meaning</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">that</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Medicare for All would cut poverty by about 22 percent.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Coincidentally, MOOP expenses also chew up about 22 percent of the income</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">of poor people. That’s right: more than 1 in 5 dollars received by the</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">nation’s poor goes towards out-of-pocket medical expenses. For families</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">with incomes above 400 percent of the poverty line, the same figure is</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">only</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">4.6 percent.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">What this means is that, by eliminating medical out-of-pocket expenses,</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Medicare for All would reduce headcount poverty by 19 percent, reduce the</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">overall poverty gap by 22 percent, and increase poor people’s incomes by</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">29 percent. Indeed, M4A’s elimination of MOOP expenses would contribute</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">more to the incomes of the poor than the Earned Income Tax Credit</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">currently</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">does. This makes M4A one of the most potent anti-poverty programs proposed</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">thus far in the current presidential race.</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><a href="https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/09/12/medicare-for-all-would-cut-poverty-by-over-20-percent/" style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/09/12/medicare-for-all-would-cut-poverty-by-over-20-percent/</a><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">[1]</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">===</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Comment by Don McCanne</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Besides the obvious advantage of single payer Medicare for All in making</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">health care affordable for everyone, Matt Bruenig shows us that it would</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">also "reduce headcount poverty by 19 percent, reduce the overall poverty</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">gap by 22 percent, and increase poor people’s incomes by 29 percent." It</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">"would contribute more to the incomes of the poor than the Earned Income</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Tax Credit currently does," making it "one of the most potent anti-poverty</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">programs proposed thus far in the current presidential race."</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Who could be opposed to that? (Dont answer.)</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">Links:</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">------</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">[1]</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><a href="https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/09/12/medicare-for-all-would-cut-poverty-by-over-20-percent/" style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class="">https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/09/12/medicare-for-all-would-cut-poverty-by-over-20-percent/</a><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""><br style="font-family: Helvetica-Light;" class=""></div></body></html>