Talking about cost is a great strategy for muddying the waters because its a mirage in that people hear the cost and don't realize it isn't extra cost but it is reduced costs from what they are already paying. College and healthcare are too expensive right now and would be much cheaper if they were "free". Muddying the waters on cost is literally the only way to reduce support for these policies since everyone does indeed support them. Its a smart strategy but only works until people understand the whole story.
Healthcare for example is already too expensive in terms of both cost and outcome
a new study from the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst finds that single-payer health care will save the US $5.1 trillion over a decade while drastically cutting working-class Americans’ health spending.
The value of a degree would be reduced for people who didn't have the competitive academic merit to earn that spot in school and that degree because now, people with more academic merit, who previously priced out and could not afford college, will have that spot and will eventually be their competitor in the workplace. This is the essence of the overall fear of free stuff. People who have success simply by being born into money will start to become outcompeted by the meritocracy these programs could produced. Some people who could afford the tuition won't even be able to get in at all if we let in smarter, poorer students. Its a scary possibility for them.
This 'savings' isn't legitimate though, as the study itself is basing its estimates off of what the bill states would happen -- as they made some very bold claims about being able to lower reimbursement costs by 40 percent.
The researcher of the study even stated the following:
Or, as Blahous told us via email, achieving a 40 percent reduction in reimbursement rates is an “unlikely outcome” and “actual costs are likely to be substantially greater.”
“To argue that we can get to that level of savings by getting rid of the health insurance middleman is inconsistent with my study,” Blahous said. “To lend credibility to the $2 trillion savings number specifically, one would have to argue that we can make those 40 percent cuts to providers at the same time as increasing demand by about 11 percent, without triggering disruptions of access to care that lawmakers and the public find unacceptable.”
So the savings isn't going to happen, and the system IS going to cost more.
Check here:
In his report, Blahous provided an alternative-scenario estimate, one that assumed instead that payments to health care providers would “remain equal on average to the current-law blend of higher private and lower public reimbursement rates.” Under that scenario, there would be a net increase in health care spending.
There's no data or research that shows the system is going to be cheaper, there are data and research to show that the system is going to be more expensive. There's no reason to complicate what you 'beleive' will happen and what will most likely happen based on research by professionals.
