Could I ask where that number is from? Is it just Medicare costs? Because US health spending is somewhere between 3 and 4 trillion, with the public share of that 50 % or greater, depending on if you count tax subsidies for employer-based health insurance.
I think the question would be rather, is it reasonable to expect that it wouldn’t given that it works in the rest of the developed world. In Vermonts case though, the problem was that they could not use the funds for Medicare, Medicaid etc, so they would have to build a new system on top of all the systems already in place.
Here is a good studyof what Sander’s Medicare for all would cost. This includes the cost of more people using the system and subtracting the drastic provider cuts and the lowered administrative costs. Adding this all up would be an average extra cost to the government of 3.2 trillion per year over a decade.
They also did a more realistic version without the provider cuts and that would cost the government and average of 3.8 trillion per year.
Sanders plan is only *named *medicare for all. It bears no relationship to medicare nor many other medicare for all plans would be like.
If we just taxed corporate america what they pay out in premiums and extended REAL medicare to cover all of us (Medicare has premiums, remember, for parts B, C, D) most taxpayers would pay less in taxes that they do now for their share of Healthcare premiums.
I googled the federal budget and got 985 billion spent on health services (sorry, trillion was a typo - I meant 1 trillion, then figured the more precise number was better). I suspect there were some other costs, for example the military budget I assume includes VA health care. I suspect some states spend their funds on health care too.
But the general total US spending on health care, including private spending (personal costs, insurance, etc.) is far higher per capita than in Canada, for covering fewer percent of the population.
if you’re going to include tax breaks for employers providing health plans, for example - the current number will go up a lot…
Well, yes. The last number I heard was a total spending of 3,5 trillion total, though it may have gone up since then. A bit below 11 000$ per American. The rule of thumb is that its about 50/50 public/private split, if you don’t count tax subsidies for employer-based healthcare.
Medicare alone is over 700 billion. Medicaid is almost 600 billion. The VA costs 275 billion, CHIP is about 14 billion and the IHS 6 billion… and the US government also purchases insurance for its employees as their employer, numbers are a bit hard to find but I think about 30 billion dollars.
So the total costs of US government health spending are about 1625 billion. Or roughly 5000 $ per American. That is more than most countries spend in total (in fact, if it was the total it would still be in the top ten in the world)
As you can see here, ambulance services in Canadian provinces cost between $0 and $530, depending on the province. Compare that to ambulance services in the US, which often cost thousands of dollars, and which aren’t covered by insurance if the ambulance service is out-of-network.
A day’s work? Anesthesiologists usually participate in more than one surgery a day, so the total figure would be much higher. When I had my last eye surgery, the surgeon used the same anesthesiologist for each surgery and did five surgeries that day.
I was being generous - I suspect that some operations (hopefully only the ones they charge $8,000 for) can go for several hours, so they’d be lucky to get two in a day. And even so, the hospital probably takes a decent share for the privilege of providing the work. But still, does any working man need to earn more than, say, $500,000 a year? Or feel slighted if they don’t?
(One of my old college dorm-mates was an anesthetist. yes, it took him an extra while - he started uni in 1974 and I met him in 1983 he was still training - but he worked summers in a clinic as a GP, and he was paid as an intern, etc. so as student life goes, he was doing pretty good. He could afford a nice apartment in downtown Toronto.)
It is impossible to know the cost of a plan unless you know what the plan is. Sanders is the the best known Medicare for All plan actually to make it to bill stage. So that is what was scored. It is a Medicare for all bill in that it covers everyone with something it calls Medicare. Other plans with other specifics would cost different amounts.