Voters in the US are already paying for healthcare for all, plus they are paying extra to support an entire healthcare insurance industry.

The USA doesn't (generally) let people die if they can't afford healthcare (people may be driven into bankruptcy, but they won't be left to die), so those costs are all getting paid by the public. And it'd be cheaper to pay for preventative care than to wait and pay for care for those that are so sick that they have no choice but to see an expensive doctor.

I've been living in the US for almost 7 years, and this is news to me. As far as I understand, Medicare only applies to people who are 65+ years old, and Medicaid only applies to families with certain income (relative to family size). What did I miss?

> The USA doesn't (generally) let people die if they can't afford healthcare (people may be driven into bankruptcy, but they won't be left to die), so those costs are all getting paid by the public.

As COVID-19 has demonstrated quite effectively, death is not the only outcome to focus on. Also, driving a person into bankruptcy or otherwise ruining their future is not what I would call "healthcare paid for by everyone".

I am sincerely hoping that I have missed something in your arguments.

Instead of waiting for someone with the flu to develop pneumonia and go to the ER because he can't breath, it'd be much cheaper to subsidize his visit to a primary care physician that he can go to before he needs a hospital.

To relate a personal experience, I have a relative that's had drug addiction problems all her life -- a few years back she had a cold or flu, couldn't afford to see a doctor so tried to ride it out at home, fortunately, she called her mom and told her how sick she was. When she didn't respond to the phone the next day, her parents drove across the state to check on her, found her near comatose and called 911. She had some bacterial pneumonia and almost died, she spent 10 days in the hospital, 5 of those days were in the ICU, intubated and in an induced coma. Because she was working and had some moderate income, she had lost her eligibility for state subsidized medical insurance. After taking 6 weeks off work to recover, she of course, lost her job, then she qualified for health care coverage and state disability payments.

The total hospital bill was over $300,000. Since she had no income or assets, the hospital wrote off the entire bill and absorbed the charges.

All of this because the public didn't want to pay $100 for her to see a doctor and get some antibiotics.

I think it's fair of you to point out that there are certain scenarios in which healthcare is not paid for by the person getting it and everyone else ends up paying for it indirectly. I also think it's fair of you to point out that it's handled in such a way that it creates a byzantine system that ends up costing us all a lot more than it should.

But that's a long long way from claiming that "voters in the US are already paying for healthcare for all", in the context of the current discussion. "Voters in the US are paying for a byzantine system that handles extreme cases that happen because of the failure to have a proper healthcare for all" is as far as I could go with your arguments ;)

But the point remains -- voters don't want to pay for it, but they are already paying for it, many just don't realize it because when they pay $500/month for healthcare insurance, they don't see the $900 that their employer is paying or the public subsidies to hospitals.

Absolute insanity. Yet changing this at a fundamental level is somehow considered radical, nothing we can do etc., except what every other western country has already done. We keep telling ourselves we have the best medical care in the world, which anyone who has lived outside the US for some time can attest is complete bullshit.

Except in the US wants to do what "every other western country has already done," which is to use payroll taxes on the middle class to subsidize mandatory health insurance or pay for a state-run system. Nobody in the US is actually serious about universal healthcare, except the folks who want to fix the ACA. Even Sanders promises not to raise taxes on people making below $250,000. If that's the promise, then all the other stuff is just talk, because the revenue can't be there to pay for any of it.

Warren actually got close to a plan for accomplishing universal healthcare without raising middle class taxes, and it only proves what a complete farce that is. It features:

- A wealth tax that goes up to 6%, four times higher than the 1.5% wealth taxes that Sweden and France abandoned (and most OECD countries never had)

- Corporate taxes around 35-39%, higher than Sweden, France, Germany, Denmark, etc.

- Capital gains taxed at the income rate, with a 70% top rate

Each of those policies individually would be outside the mainstream of the OECD. But under Warren's plan, you'd need all of these in combination just to raise half the money needed for Medicare for All.

So Sweden has corporate taxes around 22%, capital gains taxed at a flat 30%, and a top income tax rate of about 52% depending on municipality. It abandoned its wealth tax recently. Under Warren, the United States would have corporate taxes at 35% + the state rate (total 44% in California), a wealth tax going up to 6%, and a top marginal tax rate on capital gains of 70%.

Obviously we'd never do that, which shows you how it was never a serious proposal.

Good paper on the topic - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/biosoc.2010.40

I don't know why this isn't illegal. You can go from living comfortably to living in poverty even though you held up your end of the contract except for that last time when you were not even conscious.

It'd like a burger OK, here it is. What is the charge? I'm not sure. I'll send you a bill in 2-32 weeks.

Many months later, he finds out that they later sent two more bills to the address where he lived in middle school, never called him about it, and then referred them to debt collection because of course he hadn't paid them. He found out about this when the debts showed up on his credit monitoring.

Now they're denying that he gave them his current address, despite the fact that he has multiple other bills with earlier dates where the hospital has printed the correct address on them.

tldr: America's medical billing is an absurd shitshow

But Ontario has free public healthcare based on residence status, while Cali doesn't. So a better question might be what is it that US taxes are paying for that are so important (but that the neighbor in the north can do without just fine) that it can't afford healthcare instead?

Discussions about other causes for US taxes to be so high can get very political very quick because the myriad tax deductions available to the asset owning class, as well as the unaccounted for defined benefit / retiree healthcare debt that US governments have at all levels, and then you can get into military spending and so on and so forth.

https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ihcra...

If you see at the bottom, a 60 year old's age rating factor is 2.714 times a 21 year old's. Which means their premium can't exceed 2.714 times a 21 year old. Obviously a 60 year old uses far more healthcare than 2.7 times the healthcare a 21 year old uses, so effectively it's a tax on the 21 year old to pay for the 60 year old's healthcare.

> Voters in the US also don’t want to pay for any of this.

A wealth tax is pretty popular. And we spend a whole lot in health insurance premiums.

Oh, and we could cut our defense (offense) spending in half and still be spending a good bit more than China.

I will say that I recently had to deal with the medical system for a family member, and he was on decent private insurance. We actually would have received better care at a lower cost if he was on Medicare instead. N=1, of course.

I'm pretty sure that Medicare has been shown to be a more effective negotiator than the private insurers and generally operates more efficiently, but I may be misremembering.

Disclaimer that I don't support medicare for all myself, I'd much prefer a model closer to the NHS, with caveats (federal funding, county administration, state oversight).

There is more than enough money to go around, it's that there is a lot of it being wasted. The government and states failed to provide a good taxation and spending model. It's not the issue of the voters not willing to pay for it.