You wouldn't need that much for free healthcare. Remember people already pay a ton for healthcare. You'd just repackage those payments into taxes for free universal healthcare and then the government would have to pay the difference.
Many of these articles exaggerate the price of healthcare in the US. I'm an independent contractor and pay for my own health insurance. My wife and I together cost less that 500/month (universal care would take way more in taxes) Checkups are covered, prescriptions are mostly free or very inexpensive, and if I do have an emergency, I don't need to wait 6 months to get treated, like in the UK or Canada. I also get some of the best doctors in the world.
A good test of a country's quality of healthcare is where people that don't have to worry about money go to get treated....that's currently the US.
It has problems, but sacrificing quality for nationalization is not the solution.
Free healthcare does not exist (unless you enslave doctors and nurses). What you want is taxpayer subsidized healthcare, which is certainly on the table.
Universal Health care doesn't ensure you know the price before hand. If anything, it further obscures it because you don't pay, so you NEVER know the cost... but you DO pay, because nothing is free.
That's great for those who can afford it. Not so great when it means you skimp on doctors visits until things get serious because the choice is going to the doctor or going hungry or being unable to pay rent. And not so great for society when we get to pick up the tab anyway when people delay going to the doctor and get so seriously ill they need emergency care, because we'd rather not have people dying in the streets.
There's a reason pretty much no developed nations have opted to be without universal healthcare.
I'm not sure how the USA is going to fund universal health (one that's actually unversal and free like we have here in Europe) care without first having a discussion on taxes. I can't say I'm qualified to have an opinion on it but regardless what the budget in the USA is, the cost of public healthcare all of a sudden could very well be unsustainable without having a federal level tax policy similar to other countries with public heatlh care. Furthermore, the USA as a whole does not have a very healthy population, which means free health care could cause a surge in appointments and treatments. I think it's something that they will have to do sooner or later but the first years (or decade?) would be a test to overcome, and cultural changes would need to kick in before it starts running smoothly.
There isn't really such thing as free healthcare as long as staff need education and training, doctors have to be paid, hospitals need to be administrated, and treatments have material costs, etc. If it's being paid for by the taxpayer, it's not coming at no cost to them, they're paying for it in a pretty direct way.
Healthcare is not a finite or tangible resource, it is a service provided by medical professionals. It isn't possible to run out of healthcare. It is possible to have a healthcare shortage, but as long as there is money to pay for running hospitals and training doctors, that won't happen. You might think that the amount of money it would take is impossibly large, but other nations provide free healthcare to 100% of their population for less money per person than we spend in the US already. If you disagree with the fundamental idea of taking money (taxes) from some people to pay for services used by others, than you may actually disagree with the entire concept of government.
I don't understand why we don't have Universal Healthcare? Every other first world country has it. They also spend a lot less money than us. We should borrow what works best from around the world.
Looking with European lens and reacting to people that think the universal healthcare is the solution to this problem: no, it is not.
The universal healthcare solves the insurance problem, not the cost of the hospital. What US needs is not insurance for people that don't pay for it, but reasonable prices at hospitals. We have this in my country: we have both public and private insurance and public and private hospitals. The competition in the system means private hospitals will never have such prices, otherwise there will never be clients.
Instead of universal insurance coverage, you need strong competition to hospitals so there is a market price that is closer to the costs. Here the private hospitals cost more, but offer a much better quality; still, the prices are double and most middle class people can afford to pay it without insurance if needed, so these stiches would be maybe $100 while in public hospitals it would be $50-60 and covered by the public insurance. Even here in Europe there is no full, unlimited insurance, emergency care is free but everything else is covered by a mandatory insurance every employee has (paid only by employee, not the employer) and it covers the spouse and kids (under 18 years old or in college) of the insured person. That means there are people without insurance and they receive only emergency care for free, nothing else.
The average person in the US is already paying ~200% as much as a citizen of your typical single-payer country for coverage. Not only are we paying twice as much for coverage, we don't even have universal coverage after paying twice as much.
Most countries with “universal healthcare” actually have some sort of “universal health insurance.” And it’s usually not free at the point of service. Finland for example has a user fees and co-pays at the point of service.
The US government already pays more per capita (that is, more for every single living person in the USA) for healthcare than any other nation on earth.
This is entirely WITHOUT universal public insurance, the US could easily save money by making public insurance avalible for everyone.
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