[Sir_Vival]

That does provide healthcare - Medicare and Medicaid, which I believe covers about half of the US population. One reason some are opposed to going to a government paid system is the fact that we spend so much on that where if the costs were simply doubled it'd be a rediculous expense.

[dpau]

Well, by looking at more advanced countries that do have universal healthcare at fairly reasonable tax rates, there are models for how it can be done without doubling our taxes..

[arcticbull]

> One reason some are opposed to going to a government paid system is the fact that we spend so much on that where if the costs were simply doubled it'd be a rediculous expense.

They're wrong because Medicare and Medicaid are more efficient and control costs better than the private sector. Costs are already more than doubled once you add in the private sector. Even if taxes were doubled y'all would still end up paying less on the net because your employers are already paying for healthcare, which is a private tax.

[throwaway_law]

>One reason some are opposed to going to a government paid system is the fact that we spend so much on that where if the costs were simply doubled it'd be a rediculous expense.

Or maybe people would realize a County like Germany is able to cover the entire County (2x as many people as Medicare) while spending half the Medicare budget. Then, questions of waste and fraud might pop up, which no one involved wants to happen.

[y4mi]

Germany's healthcare is very efficient, but definitely very conservative in the treatments.

Issues are often just ignored until they go away. It usually works fine though, so it's not necessarily bad.

[throwaway_law]

>Issues are often just ignored until they go away.

In someways thats part of the reason our Medicare program is so expensive.

In the US we essentially go an entire lifetime without regular/preventative care, then when patients become eligible for Medicare, they have a lifetime worth of chronic illness that is treated on the tax payers dime.

7 out of 10 Medicare have at least 1 chronic condition, and chronic conditions are notoriously expensive to treat. Whereas nearly 100% of chronic conditions could be avoided if the patient had regular/preventative care (for example identifying prediabetics or patients with high blood pressure, or heart disease) while they were young enough to make the lifestyle changes to avoid these conditions altogether. Our system is essentially designed to ensure patients are both chronically ill and expensive before they are eligible for coverage.

[arcticbull]

Excess care and excess testing are not always correlated with better health outcomes. Doing more isn't always better.