It isn’t just the cost of private insurance, either.
Just the cost of US Medicare/Medicaid is more per capita than Australia pays for universal healthcare. Once you add the cost of the private market as well, it’s astronomically more.
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Yeah, that’s what I mean. If you removed all out-of-pocket expenses for all Americans, there is every reason to think that the government would actually pay less for healthcare. There’s this common sense idea that everything has to be paid for that is far too simplistic for reality. Everything does have to be paid for, but people’s health is going to be paid for one way or another. What we know is that it is far for effective to pay doctor’s salary from taxes than to pay for more work days lost to illness, more serious and frequent emergency treatments, or more disease bodies piling in the street.
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Well, if the purpose is to improve economic outcomes for unskilled or phased-out workers, well, it’s an empty gesture.
But if the purpose is simply to give private companies more money, it will probably work just fine.
I should have come up with this line the first time, but in response to “no such thing as a free lunch” I ought to have said:
If you think lunch is too expensive, you should check out the cost of starving.
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