Re:Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars
by mercutio2 on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @08:41PM
(#17614239)
Universal health care isn’t magic pixie dust.
The way UHC costs less is by paying doctors and nurses less. Negotiating lower pharmaceutical rates and reducing billing costs is nice and all, but it’s tiny compared to labor costs.
It turns out, doctors and nurses are very popular, and they vote their economic interest. Good luck getting UHC in the US that pays them less.
Remember, government spending increases the GDP. You'd have to get closer to $2 trillion to hit 11% if, for some reason, one wanted to use that as a target rather than per-capita spending.
Edit: I did some of my own research, UHC take 8~11% GDP in other countries. That would put us around 1.8 trillion (2016 GDP). Much less than $3.5 trillion you claimed.
Plus, US is already spending 16% of GDP (~3 trillion) on health care, despite not having universal healthcare. 11% GDP for UHC does not seem like a bad idea to me
source: https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm