P.J. O’Rourke put the problem in one sentence in 1993: “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.” Proponents such as Abdul El-Sayed, Peggy Flanagan, and the Democratic Socialists of America still sell Medicare for All as a simple, cheaper, “free-at-the-point-of-service” replacement for private insurance. Unlike other states, Minnesota paid for a cost estimate for instituting Medicare for All and promised to deliver to us on January 15, 2026.
But what does Medicare for All really mean? For Flanagan, “Peggycare” means eliminating all private health insurance and replacing it with a single-payer, taxpayer-funded program where you would all be essentially on whatever benefit set the government wants to allow you. For the past two decades, progressive advocates have moved past “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” to “Medicare for all” (often abbreviated by the left as “M4A”). Just as “safe legal and rare” became “abortion is health care” the left’s giant leap left in health care is broadening its reach and making the bet that more moderate voters are no longer necessary to secure wins. In places like Minnesota and Michigan and New York, the bet has paid off in recent years.
Under M4A-Peggycare arrangement all health care costs would likely be paid by some taxpayers, but not others. Progressives like Zorhan Mamdani propose shaking the money out of the pockets of overturned billionaires to pay the extra “small amount of tax increases.” Nobody is quite sure how much, but the billionaires will pay for it, according to the socialists.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost of PeggyCare to cost up to an additional $3 trillion/year nationally. But this is of course back of the napkin math. If only we had a real study that looked at the cost of socializing health care in Minnesota.
Luckily, the taxpayers of Minnesota hired a legislature who saw fit to spend $2.975 million on a study to answer that question and let us know on January15, 2026.
In 2023, DFL majorities could not pass the Minnesota Health Plan — the single-payer bill introduced as HF 2798 / SF 2740. So they turned it into a study and parked it in the health and human services conference report. Laws of Minnesota 2023, chapter 70, article 16, section 19 ordered the Department of Health to contract for a 10-year cost-benefit analysis of that exact proposal versus the current system. The report was due January 15, 2026.
The original study language carried $1.2 million of your money to fund the study. The enacted appropriation was $1.815 million in FY 2024 and $580,000 in FY 2025, with a $580,000 base in FY 2026 — nearly $3 million authorized,— to answer a simple question: what would this plan cost, and who would pay.
January 15 came and went. MDH told the Legislative Reference Library the report would slip to “later in the spring of 2026.” Spring ended. Summer ended. As of September 1, 2026, the Library still lists the mandate as received: nothing. No public model. No accounting of coverage, underinsurance, system capacity, total spending, jobs, or disparities — the very items the statute required.
record: https://www.lrl.mn.gov/mndocs/mandates_detail?orderid=18079.
