Before the first votes are cast in the Democratic presidential contest, The New York Times reviewed statements Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has made promoting his signature “Medicare for all” proposal, highlighting his long-held opposition to military intervention and arguing that he can work across the aisle. Here’s a fact-check.
what the facts are
Mr. Sanders omitted context in claiming broad Democratic support for Medicare for all and its costs.
What Was Said
Judy Woodruff, PBS anchor: “Senator, a couple of questions on domestic policy. There are polls now that show most voters would prefer to build on Obamacare, rather than go to a single-payer system, which is what you advocate.”
Mr. Sanders: “Well, depending on the poll that you look at. The vast majority of people in the Democratic primaries absolutely support a Medicare for all, single-payer system”
— in an interview with PBS in January
This is exaggerated. Mr. Sanders is correct that surveys show that a majority of Democratic voters support Medicare for all, but Ms. Woodruff is correct that other options to improve the health care system have polled better.
Given a choice between four positions on health care — a public option, a single-payer system, reforms without a public option, or only minor changes to the current system — 58 percent of Democratic voters sided with the public option while 25 percent chose single-payer, in a December poll conducted by SurveyMonkey for The New York Times.
In other polls in which voters did not need to choose between proposals, Medicare for all garnered more support, but still trailed a public option. A November poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 77 percent of Democrats either somewhat or strongly favored a single-payer system, while 88 percent felt that way about a public option. That same month, a poll from Quinnipiac University found 58 percent of Democrats viewed Medicare for all as a “good idea” compared to 73 percent for a public option.
A September poll from NBC and The Wall Street Journal showed 63 percent of Democratic primary voters support Medicare for all and 78 percent support a public option.
Similarly, 64 percent of Democrats agreed that Medicare for all is a “good idea,” according to a poll in July from NPR, PBS NewsHour, and Marist College. The same poll found 90 percent felt that way about a system the pollsters described as “Medicare for all that want it.”
What Was Said
Norah O’Donnell, anchor for CBS News: “You don’t know how much your plan costs?”
Mr. Sanders: “You don’t know. Nobody knows. This is impossible to predict.”
Ms. O’Donnell: “You’re going to propose a plan to the American people, and you’re not going to tell them how much it costs?”
Mr. Sanders: “Of course, I will. Do you know exactly what health care costs will be, one minute, in the next ten years if we do nothing? It will be a lot more expensive than a Medicare for all single-payer system.”
— in an interview with CBS in January
This is disputed. Mr. Sanders has a point that a large degree of uncertainty exists in projecting how much a Medicare-for-all system would cost, though he has also been comfortable offering his own estimates in the past. And his claim that a single-payer health care system would be less expensive than the status quo is disputed by some health economists.
Mr. Sanders said in July that Medicare for all would cost “somewhere between” $30 trillion and $40 trillion over a ten-year period. That is in line with estimates from several major studies: $34 trillion over a decade, according to the liberal Urban Institute; $32.6 trillion, according to the conservative Mercatus Center; and $24.7 trillion, according Kenneth E. Thorpe, a health policy economist at Emory University. (Lower estimates include $13.5 trillion from a study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and $9.6 trillion from Gerald Friedman, a health economist at the same university who did not contribute to that study.)
These estimates vary so widely because many key details of Medicare for all remain unsettled, including how doctors and hospitals would be compensated and how prescription drug prices and administrative fees would change. Other effects, like whether a single-payer system would lead to people using more health care services, are difficult to predict precisely. These myriad factors are why the Congressional Budget Office previously declined to estimate the cost of Medicare for all.
Just as it is difficult to put a price tag on a single-payer system, it is similarly difficult to say with certainty that it will cost less than the current health care system, despite Mr. Sanders’ assertion that it will. Some analyses back his argument while others contradict it.
The Urban Institute found that total health spending would reach $52 trillion from 2020 to 2029 under existing law compared to $59 trillion under Medicare for all. The RAND Corporation, a nonpartisan research group, estimated the current system costing $3.8 trillion in 2019 versus $3.9 trillion if a single-payer system had been in place.
On the flip side, the University of Massachusetts Amherst study projected that national health expenditures would be $5.1 trillion lower over a 10-year-period under Medicare for all. Mr. Friedman estimated savings of $5.5 trillion to $12.5 trillion during that period.
what the facts are
Mr. Sanders exaggerated elements of his antiwar record.
What Was Said
“You’re looking at somebody who has voted against all of Trump’s budgets, military budgets, and voted against them previously as well. Thinks it’s not a great idea we’re spending more than the next ten nations combined. You’re looking at somebody who in one of his very first votes — I was elected to Congress in 1990, went to the House and I voted against the first gulf war. That’s ancient history now. Remember the first gulf war? Saddam Hussein. And believe me that was not a popular vote.”
— in an interview with The Keene Sentinel in December
“You’re looking at somebody who led the opposition to the war in Iraq, gulf war.”
— in an interview with The Des Moines Register in December
This is exaggerated. Each of the claims Mr. Sanders offered as examples of his antiwar bona fides is slightly overstated.
He did vote against military spending legislation for the 2018 and 2019 fiscal years, but he missed the vote for the 2020 bill in December while he campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination. Before President Trump took office, Mr. Sanders also largely voted against the defense budgets in his three decades in Congress, with exceptions in 2010, 2009, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2003 and 2002.
In 2018, the United States spent more on its military than the next eight countries combined — not quite 10, as Mr. Sanders said — according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Mr. Sanders’ statements about his opposition to wars in the Middle East require more context. While he did vote against authorizing the first Persian Gulf war — along with a third of House Democrats and nearly every single Senate Democrat, including Joseph R. Biden Jr. — in 1991 and the war in Iraq in 2002, he supported some engagement in Iraq between the votes.
When the United States, along with France and Britain, bombed Iraq in 1993 after President Saddam Hussein violated United Nations resolutions by raiding Kuwait, Mr. Sanders said he supported those actions.
Mr. Sanders sided with President Bill Clinton in September 1996, when the United States again launched missile strikes at Iraqi military targets after Mr. Hussein sent troops into Kurdish territory. Mr. Hussein “must learn that military aggression will not be tolerated by the international community,” Mr. Sanders said at the time.
A year later, when Iraq expelled American weapons inspectors, Mr. Sanders said that, though he hoped to avoid violence, “the bombing of selected military targets in Iraq certainly remains an option.”
In October 1998, Mr. Sanders voted for the Iraq Liberation Act, a bill that “made the previously unstated policy of promoting regime change in Iraq official, declared policy,” according to the Congressional Research Service. He voted again to reaffirm support for that policy in December of that year, though he spoke out against Mr. Clinton’s ordering of airstrikes on Iraq that month.
what the facts are
Mr. Sanders made an overstated case for his ability to reach across the aisle.
What Was Said
Kathleen Kingsbury, deputy editorial page editor of The New York Times: “I was just going to ask, how do you respond to studies that show that you have one of the worst records in terms of bipartisan deal-making in the legislature right now?”
Mr. Sanders: “Really?”
Ms. Kingsbury: “Make the case for us that you’re a deal maker.”
Mr. Sanders: “Well, first of all, I’m not quite sure — I have not seen that study. You may want to go back to my role in the House where year after year after year, guess which member of Congress got more amendments passed on the floor of the House than any other in a bipartisan way. So I don’t accept that.”
— in an interview with The Times’ editorial board, published on Jan. 13
This is exaggerated. Ms. Kingsbury was referring to an annual index of bipartisanship from the Lugar Center and Georgetown University that assesses how often a lawmaker’s bill is joined by members of an opposing party and how often that lawmaker will join a bill introduced by the opposing party. By this measure, Mr. Sanders was the most partisan senator from 2017 to 2018, and the fourth most partisan out of 250 senators from 1993 to 2018. Since 2007, he has ranked as one of the top 10 most partisan senators every year but one, said Jamie Spitz of the Lugar Center.
Similarly, for the past five years, Mr. Sanders has ranked last or tied for last among senators for the number of bills he has introduced that included a co-sponsor of the opposing party, according to GovTrack, a website that tracks legislative actions.
Mr. Sanders pointed to his record on passing amendments, though that’s generally “more as a measure of legislative success or position-taking than bipartisanship per se,” said Laurel Harbridge-Yong, a professor at Northwestern University who researches partisan conflict in Congress.
As Vermont’s at-large representative in the House from 1995 to 2007 — when Republicans controlled the chamber — he sponsored the greatest number of amendments that passed by roll-call votes at 17 and the second-greatest number of amendments overall at 49, behind only former Representative James A. Traficant, Democrat of Ohio. Mr. Sanders has a point that many of these amendments passed with or even because of sizable Republican support.
But he did not mention that this record has waned in recent years. Since he was elected to the Senate in 2007, a period that includes years when Republicans controlled the chamber, Mr. Sanders has sponsored 46 amendments that passed. Of the four that passed by roll-call votes, two had near unanimous support, indicating a lack of controversy rather than notable bipartisan support, while the other two had few Republicans on board, said Ms. Harbridge-Yong.
Those numbers place Mr. Sanders ahead of the three other Democratic candidates who currently serve in the Senate, but behind 10 other senators for amendments passed and 14 others for amendments passed by roll-call vote since 2007.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
