Sen. Bennet: “Bernie mentioned that the taxes that we would have to pay — because of those taxes, Vermont rejected Medicare for All.”
This is true, although it could use some context.
Vermont’s effort to pass a state-based single-payer health plan — which the state legislature approved in 2011 — officially fell flat in December 2014. Financing the plan ultimately would have required an 11.5% payroll tax on all employers, plus raising the income tax by as much as 9.5%. The governor at the time, Democrat Peter Shumlin, declared this politically untenable.
That said, some analysts suggest other political factors may have played a role, too — for instance, fallout after the state launched its Affordable Care Act health insurance website, which faced technical difficulties.
Nationally, when voters are told Medicare for All could result in higher taxes, support declines.
And a point was made by author Marianne Williamson about the nation’s high burden of chronic disease.
Ms. Williamson: “So many Americans have unnecessary chronic illnesses — so many more compared to other countries.”
There is evidence for this, at least for older Americans.
A November 2014 study by the Commonwealth Fund found that 68% of Americans 65 and older had two or more chronic conditions, and an additional 20% had one chronic condition.
No other country studied — the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, or Canada — had a higher rate of older residents with at least two chronic conditions. The percentages ranged from 33 percent in the United Kingdom to 56 percent in Canada.
An earlier study published in the journal Health Affairs in 2007 found that “for many of the most costly chronic conditions, diagnosed disease prevalence and treatment rates were higher in the United States than in a sample of European countries in 2004.”
PolitiFact’s Jon Greenberg and Louis Jacobson contributed to this story. Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente. Politifact is owned by the nonprofit Poynter Institute for Media Studies.