Tag: medicare

The Casualty List: The Myth of the “Just Transition” for Healthcare Workers

~ Dr. K ~ Leave a comment

Part 3 in the Medicare for All House of Cards Series

Medicare for All sounds like a great solution to the problems in the US healthcare system, but when people talk about it they often do so without any recognition of the human cost of making this kind of structural change.  Implementing this plan would completely eliminate the health insurance industry and severely decrease opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Americans in businesses tied to that industry.  This cost must be added to the assessment of the overall plan.

The policy makers putting forth the Medicare for All plan are fully aware of the potential impact on the workforce.  When policymakers discuss these types of massive structural shifts, they frequently lean on a comforting euphemism: the “just transition.” In the Medicare for All Act of 2025 (S.1506/H.R.3069)¹, this concept takes the form of a federally funded worker transition program. Recognizing that a single-payer system would eliminate the private commercial health insurance market, the bill’s supporters promise to protect the livelihood of every displaced worker.

It is a noble promise, but it runs up against a significant logistical reality. A 2018 economic analysis by researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at UMass Amherst, a study conducted in support of Medicare for All, not against it, estimated that eliminating the private insurance and medical billing bureaucracy would displace approximately 1.8 million workers, including nearly 300,000 aged 60 or older.² A critical look at the funding mechanism and America’s historical record with federal job-retraining reveals real reasons for caution.

The Legislative Blueprint

The bill text provides for wage replacement, continued retirement and pension benefits, job training and placement, preferential hiring for displaced workers into new government roles, and education benefits.¹ Beyond that general framework, the precise formulas, how long wage support lasts, how it’s calculated for workers with variable income, and how tightly the transition period is bounded, are not fully specified in the bill text as introduced, leaving important implementation details to be worked out administratively.

This creates real ambiguity for certain groups. Independent insurance agents and brokers whose income relies on fluctuating commissions and policy renewals present a genuine complication: calculating a fair wage-replacement baseline for a self-employed contractor is more complex than for a salaried employee, and the bill does not appear to address the loss of a broker’s “book of business,” an active client portfolio that functions as a sellable asset, as a compensable loss.

The Structural Vulnerability of the Funding Model

Rep. Jayapal has publicly confirmed the funding mechanism: 1% of the total cost of the bill, set aside annually for five years, to support displaced workers.³ If, as estimates suggest, the single-payer budget runs $3–3.4 trillion annually, that translates to roughly $30–34 billion a year for worker transition.  This money comes out of the same overall health care budget, rather than from a separate, dedicated fund. That creates a structural tension: every dollar spent on severance, retraining, and placement services for displaced workers is a dollar not spent on direct patient care. And because the fund is bounded at five years, the program faces a hard cutoff if structural unemployment in this sector proves more persistent than anticipated.

The Historical Record: Why Federal Retraining Often Falls Short

Proponents argue that unprecedented funding levels will succeed where past programs failed. But America’s track record with federal job retraining gives real reason for skepticism. The clearest example is Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), the flagship federal program for retraining manufacturing workers displaced by trade. A rigorous 2012 evaluation conducted by Mathematica Policy Research for the U.S. Department of Labor, using a matched comparison group of similar displaced workers who did not participate in TAA, found that TAA participants earned about $3,300 less annually than their non-participating counterparts in the final year of the multi-year follow-up period, and calculated the program’s overall net benefit to society as negative.⁴ The researchers noted this may partly reflect the time it takes older, long-tenured workers to successfully retrain, a dynamic that could plausibly recur among displaced insurance-industry workers, many of whom are older, specialized administrative staff. Coal-to-clean-energy retraining programs offer a second cautionary parallel: these initiatives have consistently struggled with geographic and skill mismatches between displaced workers and available new jobs.

The Bottom Line

The Worker Transition program relies on succeeding where comparable federal efforts have historically struggled. Generous funding can pay for training and temporary income support, but it cannot guarantee that hundreds of thousands of specialized insurance and billing workers will find comparable new roles on the timeline the bill anticipates. The gap between the money committed and the outcomes historically achieved by similar programs is worth taking seriously before assuming this transition will go smoothly.

Let’s be clear, the problem with the Sanders plan isn’t a lack of funding for workers; it is a fundamental misunderstanding of labor logistics. Throwing $150 billion at a problem can buy tuition and extend unemployment checks, but it cannot instantly manufacture hundreds of thousands of vacant, high-paying, white-collar jobs that perfectly match the skills of displaced corporate insurance workers. Shifting an entire workforce by government decree is an incredibly slow, friction-heavy process. By limiting the trust fund to a strict five-year window, the plan assumes an economic agility that the federal government has never historically been able to deliver.

Sources

  1. Medicare for All Act, H.R. 3069, 119th Cong. (2025); S. 1506, 119th Cong. (2025). Full text: congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3069/text
  2. Pollin, R., Heintz, J., Arno, P., Wicks-Lim, J., & Ash, M. (2018). Economic Analysis of Medicare for All. Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Appendix 6: “Estimating Displaced Workers.” peri.umass.edu/publication/economic-analysis-of-medicare-for-all
  3. Jayapal, P., quoted in “‘Medicare-for-all’ sponsor says plan would gut 1 million private insurance jobs,” Fox News (2019). foxnews.com/politics/medicare-for-all-would-gut-a-million-private-insurance-jobs
  4. Schochet, P.Z., D’Amico, R., Berk, J., Dolfin, S., & Wozny, N. (2012). Estimated Impacts for Participants in the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Program Under the 2002 Amendments. Mathematica Policy Research, prepared for the U.S. Department of Labor. dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/publications/ETAOP_2013_08.pdf

For Further Reading: Sources for the “House of Cards” Medicare for All Series

This document consolidates every source used to verify claims across all three essays in the Medicare for All series, plus additional context readers may find useful. Organized by topic.

The Bill Itself

Federal Cost Estimates

  • Blahous, C. (2018). The Costs of a National Single-Payer Healthcare System. Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Estimated ~$32.6 trillion in added federal costs over 10 years (2022–31), using assumptions favorable to the plan’s proponents as a lower-bound estimate. mercatus.org — “How the Urban Institute’s Estimates of Medicare for All Costs Stack Up”
  • Urban Institute & Commonwealth Fund (2019). From Incremental to Comprehensive Health Insurance Reform. Estimated ~$32–34 trillion in added federal costs over 10 years (2020–29). urban.org/research/publication/estimating-cost-single-payer-plan
  • Congressional Budget Office (December 2020). How CBO Analyzes the Costs of Proposals for Single-Payer Health Care Systems. Modeled four illustrative single-payer designs; savings ranged from $42 billion to $743 billion in 2030 depending on assumptions, with the closest match to current bills (“Option 3”) yielding roughly $650 billion in savings — the source of the frequently cited “$650 billion” figure. Note: this is an analysis of illustrative design options, not a formal score of H.R. 3069/S. 1506. cbo.gov/publication/56898
  • Pollin, R., Heintz, J., Arno, P., Wicks-Lim, J., & Ash, M. (2018). Economic Analysis of Medicare for All. Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), UMass Amherst. A study conducted in support of the 2017 Sanders bill; estimated net national health spending would fall by about 9.6% under the plan. peri.umass.edu/publication/economic-analysis-of-medicare-for-all
  • Yale School of Public Health study (Galvani et al., 2020), published in The Lancet — estimated Medicare for All could save approximately 68,000 lives and reduce health spending by roughly 13% (~$450 billion) annually. Referenced in: Public Citizen, “Fact Check: Medicare for All Would Save the U.S. Trillions”

Worker Displacement and Transition

  • PERI (2018), Appendix 6: “Estimating Displaced Workers” — estimated approximately 1.8 million workers displaced from private health insurance and related administrative roles, including nearly 300,000 aged 60 or older. Same source as above.
  • Jayapal, P. — public statement confirming the “1% of total bill cost, set aside annually for five years” worker transition funding mechanism, and a separate public estimate of “about a million” displaced workers. Reported in: Fox News, “‘Medicare-for-all’ sponsor says plan would gut 1 million private insurance jobs” (2019)
  • Schochet, P.Z., D’Amico, R., Berk, J., Dolfin, S., & Wozny, N. (2012). Estimated Impacts for Participants in the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Program Under the 2002 Amendments. Mathematica Policy Research, prepared for the U.S. Department of Labor. Found TAA participants earned about $3,300 less annually than a matched comparison group in the final follow-up year; overall net benefit to society calculated as negative. dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/publications/ETAOP_2013_08.pdf
  • U.S. Department of Labor, “National Evaluation of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program” — background on TAA program design and participation rates. dol.gov/agencies/eta/research/publications/national-evaluation-trade-adjustment-assistance-program

International Comparisons

Independent Fact-Checking and Context

Medicare for All: The Hidden Truths Uncovered

~ Dr. K ~ Leave a comment

I see more and more posts with people advocating Medicare for All or some other form of single payer healthcare system in the United States. It’s a grand idea, but it just won’t work. Let me explain why.
Let’s start with some core assumptions behind this debate.

  1. A single-payer system would make healthcare services available to all Americans on an equal basis with no “out of pocket” cost for services provided.
  2. A single-payer system would remove the need for private/commercial insurance coverage and the associated premiums and out of pocket costs.
  3. All medical services can and would be available through the single-payer system.
  4. Costs for a single-payer system could be covered by reducing current spending on other programs (i.e. defense) and/or by increasing taxes paid by high income/high net worth individuals.
  5. Systems similar to those in other developed countries could be used as a model for an effective system in the United States.
    Let’s consider the idea of Medicare for all. In this model, Medicare would be expanded to include every American. When people suggest this, I think most don’t understand how Medicare actually works.
    What is Medicare?: Medicare is the federal health insurance program primarily for people aged 65 and older, though it also covers younger individuals with certain disabilities or conditions like End-Stage Renal Disease. Medicare is divided into four parts:
    • Part A (Hospital Insurance): Covers inpatient hospital stays, skilled nursing facilities, hospice, and some home health care.
    • Part B (Medical Insurance): Covers outpatient care, doctors’ services, preventive services, and medical supplies.
    • Part C (Medicare Advantage): Private plans approved by Medicare that bundle Parts A and B, often with additional benefits (i.e. Dental, Vision, Fitness).
    • Part D (Prescription Drug Coverage): Helps cover the cost of medications.
    Because original medicare does not cover all costs and does not include prescription drug coverage, the system has approved additional coverage options to help.
    • Medicare Supplements (sometimes called Medigap) offer supplemental coverage that helps cover the cost of out of pocket expenses not covered my Part A and Part B.
    So, Medicare operates as a partnership between the government and private insurance companies. But let’s keep looking to see what else we need to know.

Medicare is not free; Medicare is often misunderstood as “free healthcare,” but in reality, it is a cost-sharing system between the government and beneficiaries. enrollees pay premiums, deductibles, and coinsurance, and the program itself is funded by payroll taxes, premiums, and general federal revenue. To understand why expanding it to all Americans would be so expensive, it’s important to look at how much Medicare actually pays versus what patients still owe.
The Cost of Medicare for Current Seniors
Medicare already represents a significant financial burden:
Medicare Part A (Hospital Insurance)
• Coverage: Inpatient hospital stays, skilled nursing facilities, hospice, and some home health care.
• Costs Covered:
o After you pay the deductible ($1,676 in 2025), Medicare Part A covers 100% of hospital costs for days 1–60 of a benefit period.
o For days 61–90, patients pay a daily coinsurance ($419 in 2025).
o Beyond 90 days, patients can use lifetime reserve days (up to 60 total), but coinsurance rises to $838 per day.
• Bottom Line: Medicare Part A covers the bulk of short-term hospital stays, but extended stays quickly shift costs back to patients.
Medicare Part B (Medical Insurance)
• Part B: The standard monthly premium in 2025 is $185 (going up to $205 in 2026), with a deductible of $257 ($283 for 2026). Higher-income seniors pay more (sometimes a lot more. Do a quick Google search for IIRMA and check it out).
• Coverage: Outpatient care, doctor visits, preventive services, lab tests, imaging, durable medical equipment, and mental health services.
• Costs Covered:
o After the annual deductible, Medicare Part B pays 80% of approved medical costs.
o Patients are responsible for the remaining 20% coinsurance, and some providers may charge up to 15% more (known as “excess charges”) if they accept Medicare but not full assignment.
• Bottom Line: Medicare Part B is a cost-sharing plan, not full coverage. Patients must budget for 20% of nearly all outpatient services.
• Oh, and Medicare Part B does not cover an annual physical with no cost sharing like ACA or employer sponsored plans do.
Medicare Part D
• Part D: Prescription drug coverage also comes with premiums and income-related surcharges. Deductibles can vary by plan but could be as high as $615.00 in 2026 while premiums are projected to average $35.00 with some people paying significantly more. And then, members must still pay the co-pays for their specific medications up to the annual out of pocket limit of $2,100.
These costs are substantial even for the current senior population. Expanding Medicare to cover all Americans would multiply these expenses dramatically, requiring either massive tax increases or unsustainable federal borrowing. In fact, it is quite possible that implanting this system would actually force most American households to pay more out of pocket (in the form of taxes) than they currently pay through premiums and out-of-pocket costs under their private insurance plans.
So, ok it would be expensive. And maybe we could find away to reduce costs or increase taxes enough to pay for it, but what happens when we add everyone in the country to this single system? How does the system absorb all of those new members?

The Strain on Provider Networks
Medicare’s provider networks are already limited compared to private insurance. Studies show that Medicare Advantage enrollees often have access to only about half of the physicians in their area compared to traditional Medicare. Narrow networks and reimbursement challenges mean that many providers are reluctant to accept Medicare patients.
If Medicare for All were implemented many researchers predict:
• Provider shortages would worsen. Doctors and hospitals already face reimbursement rates lower than private insurance, which could discourage participation.
• Rural hospitals in the US are already under financial strain. Forcing them to accept all patients with current Medicare reimbursement rates could force many of them into bankruptcy. At the very least it would force providers to ration their time and create long waiting lists for non-urgent services.
• Wait times would increase. With tens of millions of new patients entering the system, the demand for services would far outpace supply.
• Quality of care could decline. Overburdened networks would struggle to maintain standards, especially for complex or specialized care.

Conclusion
Medicare for All may sound appealing as a universal solution, but the reality is stark:
• Medicare is already expensive for seniors and taxpayers.
• Expanding it nationwide would require enormous new funding.
• Provider networks would be overwhelmed, leading to longer waits and reduced access.
• We haven’t even considered the disruption that would be caused by the loss of 600,000 to 900,000 jobs in the private health insurance industry. None of the models account for that disruption.
For these reasons and more, I believe Medicare for All is not a practical or sustainable path for the U.S. healthcare system. Instead, reforms should focus on improving affordability and access without dismantling the balance between public and private coverage.