Your numbers don't make sense, so maybe there is a typo. Did you mean to say that Medicare is a tax amounting to 1-1.5% of your income, or ???
In the USA, income tax is a marginal rate, while Social Security and Medicare taxes are fixed rate (and therefore regressive).
Re:Affordable Care
by FireBeyond on Saturday January 14, 2017 @07:24PM
(#13401502)
Correct. Though it's now 2% (I moved to the US a decade ago):
"Medicare gives Australian residents access to health care. It is partly funded by taxpayers who pay a Medicare levy of 2% of their taxable income.
Your Medicare levy is reduced if your taxable income is below a certain threshold. In some cases you may not have to pay the levy at all.
If you don’t have private hospital health insurance, you may have to pay the Medicare levy surcharge (MLS) in addition to the Medicare levy. This depends on your income for MLS purposes."
On the assumption you're making ... $100K a year, this is 20% of your income.
Hard to imagine how it could be done less efficiently. Of course, the issue is then going to be "Say we reduce costs to even 5% of income", "think of the physicians/hospitals/etc"...