Medicare for All

I think Medicare for All would be a good thing but I think people are underestimating how hard it would be to implement.

People keep talking about the defense budget as if a hefty cut in the defense budget would pay for all of the progressive wish list.

The defense budget is peanuts compared to what Medicare for All would cost. In 2022 the defense budget was $747 billion. Medicare was $709 billion, Medicaid/CHIP was $695 billion. That's a total of $1.4 trillion for health coverage for 158 million people (93 million Medicaid, 65 million Medicare). There are 334 million people in the US so a simple extrapolation implies that Medicare for All would cost about $2.9 trillion. Note that this includes the estimated $600 billion in administrative costs saved by eliminating the insurance middle men. So that's a shortfall of about $1.5 trillion. The total revenue of the federal government in 2022 was $4.9 trillion including payroll taxes so MFA would cost something like 60% of current revenues and the shortfall would represent over 30% of current revenues. There's no way this is being funded without a broad new tax such as a Value Added Tax on non-essential items including cars and electronic devices. Food, clothing and other essentials would have to be exempt. Try negotiating this in our current political climate. But that's not the big problem. The big problem is that our current medical infrastructure in many places around the country might be incapable of handling the increased demand. That would mean we would also have to invest in additional medical infrastructure including, most importantly, more trained personnel. Note that neither of these two things is a reason not to have Medicare for All but it's going to take a lot more will power than a lot of people would like to admit.