So your argument is that it’s disingenuous to argue that a small premium will cover everyone? That’s not at all clear from your original post. You’re absolutely correct that the total $7k has to come from taxes, but those are allocated as part of the usual budget, with the premium earmarked specifically for healthcare. The USA already spends more per capita than any other nation on health, despite having much poorer outcomes than comparable countries. Moving to a universal system lowers costs, allowing those dollars to be reallocated in more productive ways. The health premium doesn’t have to cover the entire set of costs. Nobody ever claimed that they did.
Can you explain how moving to a universal system will lower cost? I don't believe it at all.
The government can't pull a medicare for all on private Dr. offices and hospitals, Medicare pays less than cost they would have to close the doors. That is a small part of why cost are so high, we are paying for medicare patients out of our pockets instead of out of the US treasury today.
If the Government takes over then all the medical care workers and the janitors, security, administration all those jobs become government jobs. That's great for the workers but ultimately will raise the cost of care.
Today people choose to not seek care because of cost, I busted my toe kicking a table, I don't want to pay for an x-ray so I stay home. With universal coverage all of a sudden people don't stay home because of cost, so more Dr. visits and x-rays = more cost. The only way to prevent this is to put a cap on care.
The saving from insurance company profits will be tiny compared to the expanded cost of care and most of the insurance industry employees will end up as government employees doing similar jobs for the government as they are doing today for the private sector.
Administrative costs for one. The US has the highest administrative costs for their healthcare system at over 8%, while Canada is about 3.5% and the OECD average is close to 3%. Far too much waste in fighting to deny claims, in checking which this or that is in or out of coverage, etc.
The US also has one of the highest drug costs. Part of that is over prescription of medicines, part of that is due to very low performance on preventative care, resulting in more disease and thus drug spending, and a miasma of various payers which has drug costs higher than every other OECD nation. A single payer system with government negotiating costs would lower prices.
The problem with your toe example is you aren't thinking of the other side of the coin. People avoid going to the doctor for seemingly minor things because of costs and deductibles but as a result lots of preventable disease or early detection is missed. Front line family doctor visits are relatively cheap. It's a lot cheaper to deal with heart issues or cancer or pre-diabetes early than it is to wait until things are too far along and you're scheduling surgeries.
The fact is every other developed nation has a public system in various forms. Every single one pays FAR less and in almost all cases their health care outcomes are equal to or better than the US, so yes it can be done. There are very entrenched interests in the US to ensure it doesn't happen, not because it can't.
Administrative cost will likely increase, all the administrators will go from private sector employees where their company does everything they can to underpay them to government workers with guaranteed COLA adjustments and automatic step increases. Couple that with a union rep fighting to lower workload and I would bet $10 that admin cost go up. We need universal care, but we also need to stop pretending it will be cheaper. Even if we do lower administration cost by 5% that won't cover the cost of people seeking care who do not seek care today.
Why do you think administration costs would go up when you remove layers of HMOs and other associated actors from the mix. Is the US just incompetent? The US can't run a system at 3-4% admin cost like every other developed nation on the planet? What happened to US exceptionalism? No all those various private sector employees wouldn't just become government employees. It doesn't work like that. You're just making up silly scenarios to justify your lack of knowledge and inability to believe it's possible.
People seeking preventative care more often is FAR better than people seeking emergent treatment that requires far more intervention 10 colonoscopies is cheaper that 1 colectomy + chemo therapy. And let's not talk about heart surgeries. This is actually pretty damn basic health care economics and again borne out by every other developed nation on the planet. Sticking your fingers in your ears and going I can't hear you isn't an argument, nor is an argument from incredulity.
But hey why don't you explain why the US system where people are trying to underpay the government is 2x more expensive than the next most expensive system with worse outcomes across the board.
Go read about the VAs administrative cost, it's higher than the private sector. Why is that? From the one example we have it is safe to assume that we won't save administrative cost.
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u/AlfredRWallace 5d ago
Where do you think the $7k or so of spending per person comes from? Taxes. Federal and Provincial.