Universal Healthcare

I was watch a Youtube video on the Rebel HQ channel. They had a Gen Z type quoting the outrageous medical costs in the US.

However, they were being more than a little disingenuous. No one pays those sorts of fees unless they're uninsured. Would REQUIRED universal healthcare be a hell of a lot better for everyone? Yes, I think it would be but it wouldn't be free. Universal healthcare is a form of government funded health insurance. You would just be paying for it in taxes rather than to an insurance company. Would it be less expensive? Eliminate the insurance company middle men and profits and it certainly should be.

But you WILL pay for it. Probably in taxes of some sort. It should be much more efficient than having 10 or 20 individual healthcare insurance companies as middle men so the additional taxes should be less than the cost of health insurance, the coverage will be uniform and it will travel with you as you change jobs. Plus, the administrative costs for doctors and hospitals will be less because they won't have to deal with a dozen or more individual insurance companies. That sounds to me like it would be a lot better but, one more time, you will pay something for it.

For example, Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All proposal in 2020 included a 4% surcharge on taxable income. Go to line 15 of your 1040 and multiply that amount by .04 if you want to know how much that would be for you.

It's that word "REQUIRED" that seems to cause all the problems. Just like some people refused to wear masks and get vaccinated some are opposed to being required to pay for universal healthcare.

We're on Medicare (because we're old and feeble ;-)) and it's pretty good but it's not free. Aside from the fact that we've been paying toward it the whole time we were working there are still monthly fees that are deducted from Social Security. For Part A, hospitalization, there is no charge for but Part B, doctors visits etc., and Part D, prescriptions, there are fees. My wife and I pay around $400 per month for Parts B & D and the federal government still has to provide an additional $353 billion in Medicare funding plus there's $518 billion in Medicaid funding. To put that in perspective, the Department of Defense budget is $773 billion.

Again, referring back to Sanders' 2020 proposal, he came up with a budget of about $1.6 trillion which included all of the Medicare and Medicaid funding plus the revenue from the surcharge and a few other sources. I thought he was about $1 trillion short but I'm a natural pessimist.