Now here is the perfect place for a like button. 
In fairness, the “subsidy” received by members of Congress and their staffs is the same as the “subsidy” paid for the health care policies of about 2.5 million Federal employees. It is mainly that the plans offered to politicians and their staffs are the same plans offered on the individual ACA market; whereas the plans offered to nearly all other Federal employees come from a list of plans negotiated by the Office of Personnel Management.
Do those 2.5 million people also enjoy the free care added at the end which, in reality, are probably the main features?
No, those are clearly perks for members of Congress only. By “subsidy,” I thought you were referring the the 72% employer cost share, which is a government-wide policy.
Between the base budget, R & D, and actual warfare, the defense budget is about a trillion dollars every year. The problem isn’t that we can’t afford universal healthcare, it’s that our government’s desire to try to police the entire planet takes priority over the health of its citizens.
Warfare and healthcare are extremely profitable, and poor people are expendable seems to be the prevailing attitude in Washington.
No, it’s like $600 billion. Let’s not exaggerate.
$639.1 billion, which doesn’t include research and development or the cost of warfare.
I didn’t consider they’d be so brazen. I should have known better.
That’s quite a lot to spend on tweets.
Trump’s proposed defense budget, including military R&D, parts of the FBI and DoE, but excepting war costs, is $603 billion. So I have no damn idea where you’re getting your numbers.
Your CMS link to National Health Expenditures is Total US spending both public and private.
A recent analysis of US Government alone expenditures on healthcare gives a figure of almost $6000/person, not $4500.
When you factor in VA (luring citizens to join the military and treating them when disabled in battle), para-military organisations like CIA, war costs not included in base DoD budget, subsidies for foreign purchase of U.S. munitions, nuclear weapons work, etc., then $1 trillion per year is an excellent ballpark estimate for U.S. military spending.
The exact number will depend on what you count and what you omit. Here’s one estimate of $824.6 billion for the present fiscal year.
$ 4500 per citizen. Not per patient or per covered person. Per American. The point I was trying to make was that the American taxpayer pays more money for government healthcare than most UHC countries taxpayer. **Jasg **has made that point better than I did, though with more updated numbers.
I am a bit surprised at your coverage numbers though. As far as I can see, that totals to about 40 % of the US populations, without even considering the other government health programs. Over-65s are far more expensive medically. Is that people eligible to apply for Medicaid rather than people who have applied ? Or are there significant numbers of people on both programs?
Might as well throw in the State Department, USAID, Department of Commerce, Department of Transportation, Department of the Treasury, Homeland Security, and a few other agencies as well if we are just going to pad numbers.
Bernie Sanders went to Canada this week and said some things that were not completely true. Most notably, that in Canada, everyone gets the medical care that they need. That is false. In Canada, everyone gets EQUAL care. Sure, the vast majority get what they need, but not everyone’s getting proton beam therapy for their cancer treatment, or the latest biologics. Over in Iowa, there’s a hemophiliac boy getting $12 million in medical treatment per year. I just can’t envision a single payer system that pays for that. Of course, the private system won’t either, for long. Insurers pulled out of Iowa in part because no one wants to take care of this poor kid. But we already acknowledge that under a private system, not everyone gets the health care they need. What’s needed is to also acknowledge that this is true of universal health care as well. Sanders is unwilling to face up to that reality.
Does ANYBODY get those treatments? How do they decide who gets the proton beam therapy for cancer?
And yet, we pay that much, per month, for Trump to visit his golf courses.
Which item on my list seemed like it was there just to pad numbers? CIA is to thwart foreign enemies. VA is a direct cost of having military personnel. Was it the nuclear weapons work that seemed non-military to you?
Might as well throw in crayon companies, circuses and soybean farms if you are just going to make random additions for some obscure argument.
Are you certain that it would cost $ 12 million in a single payer system ? Because most things have lower costs there than in the US system.
In the US system, they charge what the market will bear for the treatment. Which is quite a bit for lifesaving treatments. They probably have loans to serve from the setup of the treatment, and the usual massive US bureaucracy.
In a single-payer country the proton-beam facility would be paid for through taxes and the people who work there would be on a salary. The costs per extra unit treated would be small.
Current estimates is that about 8-10 % of cancer patients getting radiation therapy would benefit from the proton-beam treatment. So in Norway we are building two facilities to cover that. Each is budgeted to cost about 250 million $ to set up. Once that is done, we’ll have covered the need and running them will involve covering salaries and maintenance. Estimated 1000 patients per year per centre.
So yes, its been established that its a very beneficial treatment, and so we’ve started to insure that everyone who needs it can get it. And it certainly won’t cost 12 million per patient.
Since the process isn’t totally transparent, it’s hard to say. It’s not about money, so it is still equal, but the process might be totally arbitrary, like finding a doctor willing to recommend it, or it could be based on likelihood of successful treatment as decided on by a medical board.
The British system is far more transparent and they primarily go by QALY(Quality Adjusted Life Years) to put a price on human life.
And yes, that’s an absolute necessity in a single payer system, for human life to be priced. There is no other way to allocate health care resources fairly.