[darkarmani]

> amnesty for illegal immigrants. It sounds nice, until you think about the obvious result.

You mean because of the sizable labor black market would shrivel up and suddenly all of these laborers would be able to collect on benefits on the taxes they've paid on the system? there is a good question there.

What is the approximate size of benefits that are getting funded but lie unclaimed by black market labor?

[rpmisms]

Don't take me out of context and then demand I defend a strawman. I clearly referred to the combination of amnesty and public healthcare as expensive, not one or the other. The bottom 50% of the country by income, which by-and-large black market labor falls under, pay less than 3% of federal taxes. That's not going to fund very much.

[rootusrootus]

It seems like the natural conclusion is that the US health system is inadequate to the task of providing health care for every citizen. Some portion of the population has to do without.

That sounds uncharitable, yes. But the same contingent that claims we cannot feasibly support universal healthcare due to the bottom 50% being essentially leeches on society happens to be the same people who insist that we cannot improve income for the bottom 50% because the free market is speaking.

[rpmisms]

There are solutions to Healthcare that do not involve a single-payer solution. Namely, targeted deregulation to allow meaningful competition. Shorten the IP window for pharma companies. Allow startups to move fast and break the system.