Funding must come from a tax

WASHINGTON — Paying for "Medicare for All" could require raising payroll taxes by 32 percent on workers and businesses, among other options, according to a new report from a think tank that advocates for balanced budgets.

But the report, released Monday by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, also suggested that middle class families could save money overall, even with significantly higher taxes.

The study comes as Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., both presidential candidates, face pressure from rivals to detail how they would pay for their proposal to move the country onto a more generous Medicare program with no premiums and minimal out-of-pocket costs. Warren has said she is working on such a plan.

The new report assumed Medicare for All would add an additional $30 trillion in federal spending over 10 years, which is toward the lower end of outside studies and in line with rough estimates by Sanders, the author of the Medicare for All bill.

“It’s probably generous for how much it would cost in the real world,” Marc Goldwein, the committee's senior vice president, told NBC news.

Other options that on their own could fund Medicare for All, according to the study, include a 25 percent income surtax; a 42 percent value-added tax on consumption; a move to more than double all individual and corporate tax rates; or, more likely, a combination of taxes.

The report estimated that taxing the rich, corporations and the financial sector could cover only one-third of the total cost on its own.