Michael Hiltzik: An anti-deficit group tells a scary story on 'Medicare for all,' but is it the whole story?
It's Halloween week, so what better time could there be to issue an estimate of the cost of "Medicare for all" that will scare the hell out of American taxpayers?
Perhaps that's what the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is thinking. On Monday, it issued a gruesome analysis of what it would take for the federal government to finance a universal healthcare program on a scale contemplated by some Democratic candidates for president (think Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren).
The headline horrors to select from, according to the CRFB's "preliminary" analysis, include these: a payroll tax increase of 32%, an income tax surtax of 25%, a 42% value-added tax (similar to a sales tax), a mandatory premium of $7,500 per person, a doubling of
