this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2026
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Work Reform
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I mean
Yeah
But there are a couple issues with this statement from a logical standpoint grounded in reality:
It's estimated that Universal Healthcare would be cheaper, actually. Letting hospitals and insurance companies set prices drives up the margins, and almost all of the insurance industry is just needless overhead. It would cost negative money to make the US Government the pricemaker for medical care, and the US Government would spend less money than it currently does to maintain it.
Even if that were not the case, HYPOTHETICALLY, if you just extrapolate the costs of Medicaid to cover everyone, you're looking at between tens of billions to hundreds of billions, not 3.
ok but for 2 don't forget about the trillion. thats a lot of billions
Yeah but you're not going to convince people to slash defense budget by a full trillion. It would be madness while China and Russia are acting more aggressive than they have been in over 50 years.
yeah but it would not even be close to a trillion and china and russia don't spend nearly what we do combined.
Well it's already not a Trillion, so yes. The $1.5 number is Trump's request for 2027. Even Republicans, as stupid as they are, are afraid of the banks letting them go default.
If you cut 100 billion of it, you would still have 1.4 trillion to kill brown people with.
Well, no, you'd have about 890 Billion because the 1.5 Trillion is an imaginary figure that Trump made up. The largest parts of that are paychecks and maintenance.
To cover costs, we cannot compare the current system. The current, utterly bloated, most expensive system would not exist with universal healthcare.
The US currently spends about $5 trillion on healthcare. About $1T of that goes through Medicare, another $0.9T through Medicaid, which leaves about $3T. Non-government spending is $1.6T through private insurance, $0.6T out of pocket, and $0.5T charities.
The "universal healthcare would be cheaper argument," which I believe, is based on shifting that $3T of private payments into government spending and bringing the ~85% efficiency of care by private insurers up to the 98% that Medicare claims. i.e.: eliminating roughly $400 B of insurance company profit. That still requires $2.5T revenue increase, which is about 50% of current revenue.
You're operating under the assumption that the US Government would pay the same prices that they currently pay via medicaid and medicare as well as the same prices that private pays. That's not the case. Generally, the US Citizens pay double or more than what citizens in other developed nations pay.
Docs in the rest of the world don't start with $200k student loans, and nurses don't start $50k in debt. US medicare for all won't magically give us Swedish hospital rates.
I geniunly wonder what the total cost looks like. Like does it cost sweden 200k to train a doctor?
Agree. I'd love to see someone do a rigorous accounting of any degree program, especially with international comparisions. I once went through a couple of US state universities, and that generally supported the hypothesis of 'cost of instruction hasn't changed in 50 years, but burden of payment has shifted from state taxes to tuition,' but that was based on whatever the schools published as 'cost of instruction.' I'd believe that international cost of instruction follows purchasing price pairity, and it seems more expensive in the US because it's all tuition and no public payment.
Education aside, the USA already solely pays for residency programs. I just don't see any room for bargaining or negotiations if every hospital is suddenly forced to receive funds for healthcare solely from the federal government or lose practically all business.