Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was probably being only a little sarcastic Monday night when he thanked libertarian-leaning conservative donors and activists Charles and David Koch for supporting his most famous proposal. "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, pointing to a new study published by Charles Blahous at the Koch-subsidized Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
In the white paper, Blahous estimates that Sanders' universal, single-payer health-care proposal would raise federal spending on health care by about $32.6 trillion from 2022 to 2031, but other economists noted that, according to the same report, federal health-care spending overall would drop by a little more than $2 trillion in that same period. There are a lot of caveats and untested assumptions in the numbers, but Sanders took the unintentional endorsement and ran with it.
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