Blogging for the AFL-CIO, Mike Hall extols the benefits of socialized medicine, including: (1) lower heath care costs, and (2) higher health care costs. Here’s how he puts it:

The incoming Obama administration is developing a comprehensive plan to address a broad range of health care concerns. The AFL-CIO has not endorsed a specific plan but has established certain principles that any plan should be built around.

Reform must secure high-quality health care for all; lower the costs that are now crushing working families and businesses and share responsibility among employers, government and individuals among other principles.

Earlier this week, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), which backs a single-payer, Medicare-for-all health care reform plan, released a study that says such a plan would not only guarantee health care for all, but would be a major boost to the nation’s staggering economy.

The study, conducted by the Institute of Health and Socio-Economic Policy, says a single-payer plan would provide a major stimulus for the U.S. economy by creating 2.6 million new jobs and infusing $317 billion in new business and public revenues, with another $100 billion in wages into the U.S. economy.

Got that? Socialized medicine will “lower the costs” but also “infuse $317 billion in new … revenues.” What are those new revenues, other than higher costs for whoever is paying those revenues?

The California Nurses Association summarized their study as follows:

Medicare for All (Single Payer) Reform Would Be Major Stimulus for Economy with 2.6 Million New Jobs, $317 Billion in Business Revenue, $100 Billion in Wages.

The number of jobs created by a single payer system, expanding and upgrading Medicare to cover everyone, parallels almost exactly the total job loss in 2008, according to the findings of a groundbreaking study released today.”

How convenient! Of course, for years the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) have been telling us we need socialized medicine because it will result in $350 billion in lower health care costs.

Doctors and hospitals must maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the bureaucracy. Combined, this needless administration consumes one-third (31 percent) of Americans’ health dollars.

Single-payer financing is the only way to recapture this wasted money. The potential savings on paperwork, more than $350 billion per year, are enough to provide comprehensive coverage to everyone without paying any more than we already do.

That $350 billion saved in paperwork of course means $350 billion in lost jobs for whoever is doing that paperwork.

So socialized medicine will both create jobs by spending over $300 billion more – and save money by spending over $300 billion less. Now that’s magic!

UPDATE: The duplicity of the left goes even further than originally believed. Just three months ago, the same California Nurses Association posted an article by John Geyman of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), claiming that Medicare for All was a good idea because it will result in $350 billion in lower health care costs.

So the California Nurses Association is claiming both that “Medicare for All” is good because it will save $350 billion, and good because it will cost an extra $317 billion. How it will do both of these is not – and cannot – be explained. But regardless of the predicted outcome – it’s nationalized health care, so they’re in favor of it.