[8note]

would it actually be that different of a bill?

i imagine its already doing the most expensive part, treating people who are almost dead who have lots of procedures that could be done.

picking up people that need basically no care sounds pretty cheap by comparison

[WalterBright]

Estimates of Medicare errors, fraud and abuse are around $60 billion. Greatly increasing the scope of it will, inevitably, increase that figure.

[gusgus01]

Estimates of health insurance fraud is also around $30 billion, so same order of magnitude, and considering the margins of error and the fact that they are estimates, by definition, it makes it hard to say public health insurance is more fraud ridden then private. Plus due to the inherent differences there are probably differing avenues of research and estimating possible between private and public insurance, and heck whole different forms of draining money that might affect ease of uncovering the level of fraud between private and public, which would make it have an even larger margin of error.