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Comment on Saint Luigi
Dragon@lemmy.ml 2 weeks agoIt’s only cheaper if you consider current healthcare costs. It would require tax increases, and under current progressive tax models, those would be disproportionately high for the upper class, for whom the increase would not offset the elimination of their healthcare premium.
LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Dragon@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I said under current progressive tax models.
LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
[deleted]Dragon@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
It depends on the state. Massachusetts actually does have a flat income tax, so maybe it would be easier to do there. But even so, wealthy people might prefer to buy private plans, and see the tax as redundant.
TheRagingGeek@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah we need to deflate the disproportionately high pricing of the health care caused by insurance as well, if we could get it at the national level we could eliminate a lot of the back office overhead, and then maybe negotiate a revisit of the master charge list so that Tylenol in hospital isn’t something crazy like $250 dollars a dose. State by state this would probably be much more difficult.
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
No, the sum of all premiums paid by all Americans is way more than is required. You could make it a flat tax and it’d still be cheaper.
The tax increase is more than offset by the cost of premiums.
Dragon@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
That may be the case, but do you have any evidence or reasoning? There are a certain number of people right now who don’t have insurance or who have very bad insurance, and a universal insurance would have to have to make up what’s missing for those people.
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
There’s a variety of ways to implement it, but the vast majority save trillions in the long run. citizen.org/…/fact-check-medicare-for-all-would-s… has a couple sources listed, even a Koch-funded institute found it would save money.
The reasoning is simple: you cut out the middlemen who demand a portion of the premiums for themselves. Those costs are instantly removed, and there isn’t really anything that starts costing more in return.
There’s also collective governmental bargaining on procedures and medication which lowers prices.
Dragon@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I understand that it saves money overall. I don’t understand how it could save money for individual high-income tax payers. At some warming level, your taxes will be raised by more than you would pay for insurance. Even under a dollar tax, that has to be the case, right? You would need a regressive tax to actually make it beneficial to every single resident.