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There are a lot of downsides to a Medicare-for-all system, specifically having to do with the actual care — the time to see a doctor or specialist, the lack of innovation, the fact that everyone still needs to pay insurance premiums even under those programs, and eligibility for anyone who sets foot in the US. Just look at the VA.
Proponents claim that they'll pay for it by taxing the rich. If it were that easy, countries with socialized medicine would already be doing it. There's enough there to cover costs for about a year. Maybe. But one feature that does finance socialized medicine is value-added tax.
The short version is that the federal government imposes a sales-type tax of somewhere between 16% and 24% on practically everything. (At the risk of being impolite, this needs to be shouted at every idiot who pretends that such a program can be implemented without pain. Look forward to that $40K economy car costing $50K.) It's on top of whatever state/local sales tax applies to purchases in your jurisdiction, so the combined cost added to purchase prices will exceed 30%.
Nobody ever polls those Euros about whether they'd rather pay the tax on everything or just pay for healthcare. It might be an eye-opener, but we may never know. Yet a serious swath of Americans are firmly behind the nationalization without even considering how this huge hike will diminish the standard of living.
I am not an economist, but if you add an additional cost to everything, you make it less affordable by definition. And no, it's not a replacement for what we currently spend on health insurance. You lose the insurance company profit, but insurance companies actively and aggressively police expenditures and work hard to prevent fraud (unless they have some guaranteed reimbursement arrangement). Given what we're seeing, the incentive for government agencies to restrain expenses gets turned upside down immediately.
An insurance company that cannot control fraud and abuse will be a former insurance company. Government programs are generally permanent, no matter how much they cost or how dissatisfied the citizens are with them.
Republicans should be leaning into the cost of Medicare for all and explaining that "free care" is very expensive.
Discussion (22)
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Regarding costs of healthcare, we have some numbers that we use in our current system but there's no clue anywhere regarding what those numbers represent(if someone here thinks this statement is wrong, send me the information that sets it right).
I think we have essentially the same condition in the education system, secondary and graduate.
The existing healthcare and education systems already solicit your participation on a regular basis, have you noticed? Can you guess why? Only those who have not touched the systems at all would possibly not have had this experience.
The lack of any marketplace numbers supporting the expenditures keeps me from having any interests in the underlying specifics. We are dealing with a totally fabricated system.
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Many of the countries admired for their socialized medical care have broad taxation on almost everybody. Taxation is not concentrated on high income individuals. Considering even just the income tax, these countries generally have quite significant income tax rates (like 30 - 40%) that kick in at relatively low income levels (like the equivalent of $30K - $40K of income), but go up to "only" about 50 - 60% for "high income" individuals.
And often they have a substantial (20%) Value Added Tax (VAT) in addition to the income tax.
Everybody in countries with socialized medical costs is paying a lot of taxes for that socialized medical care.
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I was pretty fond of W, but he effectively cut taxes for the lowest tax brackets, which is normally a good thing, but limited the percentage of working tax payers to about 50%. When that high a percent of citizens pay no income tax, they are unaffected by rate increases and spending as they have no skin in the game. They will vote for more benefits as long a it costs them nothing.
Big increases in the out-the-door price of everything will take seniors from no/low cost healthcare to 20% of everything they spend (plus supplemental). Ironically, the imposition of a VAT will require an increase in Social Security payments in order for seniors to keep up with a jarring 20% overnight inflation. Your lifetime savings take a huge haircut in terms of what you can buy (afford!) after a VAT is imposed. Reagan characterized inflation as a tax, and when your life savings become worth 80% of what it was before VAT, you have become poorer as a result of government policy. About the same effect as a direct tax.
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Why would we take the Europoors as our model for healthcare?
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Well for one thing, when A European has a family member facing terminal illness, that person can actually spend time with them as needed.
In the USA, that individual will be allocating half their time to being on the phone trying to make sure the insurance policy they pay that insanely high premium to will actually allow the necessary, double & triple doctor-approved claim to go through so the relative is not booted out of the hospital.
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