Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) thanked the conservative mega-donors Charles and David Koch on Tuesday for “accidentally making the case for Medicare for All” in a new analysis on the cost of such a single-payer health-care plan.
Sanders made the comments in a video he posted to Twitter in response to a study published by Charles Blahous at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University — a center subsidized by the Kochs.
“Let me thank the Koch brothers, of all people, for sponsoring a study that shows that Medicare for all would save the American people $2 trillion over a 10-year period,” Sanders said.{mosads}
In the study, Blohous predicts Sanders’s single-payer health-care plan would raise federal health-care spending by about $32.6 trillion between 2022 and 2031. Other economists noted in the same study, however, that federal health-care spending would drop overall by just more than $2 trillion.
In the video, Sanders thanked the Koch brothers for proving his plan would cut health-care costs.
Medicare for all, which Sanders popularized as a talking point during his 2016 presidential campaign, would cover all U.S. citizens without copays or deductibles.
His proposal has been embraced by those on the left but has been the subject of criticism from others, including President Trump, who once called single-payer a “curse on the U.S.”