Healthcare

Universal healthcare has been proposed in the past and about half of the people polled favor this which is estimated to cost about $4 trillion per year. Total cost of healthcare in 2023 was $4 trillions. That is broken down as follows Medicare $944billion Medicaid $806 billion Private $1,289 billion Other $564 billion Out of pocket $471 billion If the universal plan included transferring the $1,289 billion that companies currently pay to the government plan the cost would be the same. The upside is that administrative cost of government healthcare is 5% while the same cost in private care is 15% or three times higher. The downside is that many people feel private care is better. While that is true for Medicaid and Obamacare it is not true for Medicare which is comparable to private care. In any case the argument should not be based on cost but rather on the type of service. Many union plans are superior and were achieved over the years by sacrificing increases in wages and they would not be willing to accept a lesser plan like the government would offer. One suggested compromise is that there be one government plan for everyone and wealthy people would have the option to purchase a private plan on top of the base plan. It should be noted that there are 600,000 people employed in the private healthcare field and these jobs would be in jeopardy. The US spends about 18% of GDP on healthcare compared to 12% in European countries and much of this is differences in administrative cost. Companies would be OK with this since they would no longer have to deal with dissatisfied patients as the government would handle all disputes.