August 18, 2018
I already did a tweet on this, but thought it was worth posting here. Jake Tapper did a completely inaccurate fact check on Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over their claim that a study by a right-wing think tank showed that Medicare for all would save the country $2 trillion over a decade (roughly 0.8 percent of GDP). Tapper misrepresented their comments to say that they claimed the study would save the government $2 trillion. He then points out that the study showed Medicare for all would hugely increase the cost of healthcare to the government.
Of course, the cost to the government will increase if it takes responsibility for the bulk of healthcare payments in the country. No one is contesting this point. The question is what happens to the cost of healthcare to the country as a whole. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez were accurately citing one of the scenarios in the study on this point.
Tapper owes it to Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, and more importantly to his audience, to correct himself on this one. It’s a straightforward point and he really should be able to get it right.
Note: I earlier had termed the fact check “dishonest.” This implies I know Tapper’s motives, which I don’t. I changed the term to “inaccurate.”
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