Implementing a universal, single-payer health care system would save the U.S. more than $1 trillion and some 114,000 lives every year, according to a recent Yale University analysis.
In a preprint paper posted on July 24 that has not yet been peer-reviewed—the gold-standard quality check for academic research—scientists at Yale’s School of Public Health and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, found that, under the current U.S. health care system, which largely hinges on private insurance, Americans spend some $5.2 trillion per year on health care. Under a “Medicare for All” system, they estimated, that would shrink to around $4.2 trillion, with savings of $1.04 trillion.
As defined by the researchers, Medicare for All would expand the current Medicare system, which currently provides health insurance to Americans aged 65 and older, to the entire population. It’s a popular policy point on the political left, and the study has already been picked up by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a staunch universal health care proponent.
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In a statement, Sanders, who has introduced numerous Medicare for All bills during his tenure, said the study “confirms what we have known for years: Medicare for All saves lives and saves money.”
“At a time when 15 million Americans are being thrown off the healthcare they have and 20 million Americans have already seen their premiums double, on average, as a result of Trump’s so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ we need Medicare for All now more than ever,” he said. “The time is now to end the greed of the big insurance and drug companies and pass Medicare for All.”
According to the paper, the reduced cost would largely stem from lower drug prices and eliminating fraudulent billing from insurance companies, with additional savings from avoiding unnecessary emergency and inpatient care. The researchers also estimated the potential number of lives saved: they presumed a higher mortality rate for the 27.5 million people in the U.S. who have no health insurance, finding that some 114,174 deaths could be avoided by introducing a universal, single-payer system.
The study builds on a 2020 Yale study that was published in the Lancet and found that switching to Medicare for All could reduce costs by $450 billion and save more than 68,000 lives annually. The new analysis takes into account how much health care costs have risen in the time between the two studies, as well the aging American population and other changes to health care policy.
The core takeaway of the analyses, then and now, is the same, the authors wrote in the new paper.
“A universal health-care system in the US would not require the country to spend more on health care,” they wrote. “It would require it to spend less. Our results indicate that the existing budget is more than sufficient to cover everyone at lower total cost. The obstacle to universal coverage has never been the absence of resources, but the way they are allocated.”