I pay $421/month for health insurance that has a 20% deductible, meaning that I could still be bankrupted by a major surgery or a couple of weeks in the hospital. I would much rather put that $421/month into taxes and have Medicaid or something similar A) keep costs down, and B) ensure an acceptable quality of treatment.

You're likely paying something similar whether you realize it or not. When I quit my job the COBRA cost of the insurance was like $600 or $700/month. It's just that your employer is hiding that cost from you and giving you "free" medical insurance. And when you quit your job, you lose your medical insurance after 6 months. That means you lose access to your doctor and you may have to change who you see. Sometimes the new doctor is way worse, and there is a very real cost to you in terms of their standard of care.

So it's pretty disingenuous to argue that this would be a new tax. And making it illegal for employers to offer health insurance while also expanding Medicaid to all Americans would actually remove a major barrier to quitting your job and EG starting a company or working for a small company.

I think the US public doesn't want to lose more of their money to healthcare than it currently is - and this is the attack that's most commonly leveraged against universal healthcare... "Your taxes will go up!" well yes, they will, but my out of pocket will go down as I'll no longer be shoveling so much money from my salary (either pre- or post- collection) to health insurance.

You hit the nail on the head. I have written answers on Quora that show numbers to support your thoughts.

I used to paste links to these posts here but people felt I was spamming, so I don't do that anymore.

Feel free to look at my other comments and posts on Quora as well as reach out to me. We need more people like you to bring prosperity.

The status quo will not bring us prosperity.

I'm Canadian and I don't pay substantially more income tax that Americans do in high tax states such as California. So what do you get for your high taxes? Not health care thats for sure.

I guess what you mostly get is a very expensive military.

I honestly would like to see the military eliminated. It's not like Canada or Mexico are going to invade us. We could keep the missile defense to protect from anyone trying to attack us over the oceans. As for protecting commerce, let shipping companies weaponize their boats and pass on the cost to consumers. I'm sure the defense contractors not selling to the US military anymore would be happy to design systems for the shipping companies.