[mwerd]

Let's hope the single payer isn't Medicare then, because you would have a lot fewer hospitals. Here's the money quote straight from the horse's mouth "In 2021, Medicare’s payments to hospitals continued to be below hospitals’ costs in aggregate" https://www.medpac.gov/document/march-2023-report-to-the-con...

Medicare and Medicaid are subsidized by a shadow tax on working people. Commercial insurance, like the majority of readers of this website get through their employers, pays roughly double the cost per procedure as Medicare and Medicaid. Your health premiums would be lower if we all paid the same price, but your taxes would be higher.

[Accujack]

Extending the current medicare system to simply cover everyone would be a stupid thing to do. Anyone involved with the problem knows that more changes are needed than to simply open the floodgates, and assumes that it will take a lot of work. I don't know why you don't understand that.

>Medicare and Medicaid are subsidized by a shadow tax on working people.

Straight out of the GOP list of talking points. Are you upset that your "hard earned dollars" are going to people who don't deserve them?

[mrguyorama]

>Medicare and Medicaid are subsidized by a shadow tax on working people

It's right there on the damn W2, how is that a "shadow" tax?

>Commercial insurance, ..., pays roughly double the cost per procedure as Medicare and Medicaid.

And also every other developed country! Why is "the average american or their health plan pays double everyone else" a good thing?

>Your health premiums would be lower if we all paid the same price, but your taxes would be higher.

Also laughable. Somehow our citizens pay way more than anyone else in the world, and largely don't have better life expediencies (women giving birth in america die shockingly often!). We pay more into private healthcare systems than the rest of the world pays into public systems.

[toomuchtodo]

If the costs are too high, you need a combination of cost controls and increased supply, not more funds to throw into the furnace. You also cut out as much of the admin as possible, as that is very low value spend vs delivering care.

I like taxes, with them I buy civilization. I want my taxes to go up, and my medical premiums to go away. Covering everyone is simply more economically efficient in aggregate vs the current Rube Goldberg system design, where the US spends more on healthcare than every other OECD country for worse outcomes.