Gerald Friedman Responds to Kenneth Thorpe on Single-Payer

A distinguished professor and Chair of the Department of Health Policy & Management, in the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University, Kenneth Thorpe has been one of the leading figures in the analysis of health care finance in the United States. From 1993-95, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in charge of coordinating financial estimates and program impacts of President Clinton’s health care reform proposal. Since leaving the Clinton White House, he has written widely about the economic advantages of a single payer system to finance health care. (See footnote 1.)

Thorpe’s expertise and reputation have added weight and authority to his attack on Senator Sanders’ program for Medicare-for-All. (See footnote 2.) This makes it all the more important that his analysis receive the type of scrutiny due a serious policy proposal. Unfortunately, Kenneth Thorpe does not provide enough documentation to make an explicit comparison between his estimates and those provided in detail by the Sanders campaign. He lists his projected Federal spending per year, he fails to explain how he calculated these numbers. While this failure makes it impossible to consider his claims on a point by point basis, it is possible to extract enough from his statement to conclude that his analysis is so deeply flawed that it implies some clearly unrealistic assumptions.…

Dollars & Sense

Gerald Friedman Responds to Kenneth Thorpe on Single-Payer

Gerald Friedman | Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst