It does have to. The US spends about $5 trillion per year in healthcare, whereas they intentionally pushed the military budget up to $1 trillion this year just because it sounded cool to Trump. Experts say we could maybe reduce the total healthcare costs to $4 trillion per year over time by improving healthcare efficiency once we have a single-payer system, but the fact remains that taxes will have to go up for most people if we want to actually institute M4A.

Edit: the $5T figure, like the related $4T one, is actually several years old, now that I think about it; it's probably closer to $6T now.

[–] Horse@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

the fact remains that taxes will have to go up for most people if we want to actually institute M4A.

yeah, but the increase will be less than what you're spending in private health insurance
plus the $5 trillion will go down as state funded healthcare drives prices down (or has elsewhere)

[–] Sphere@hexbear.net 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

This is all generally true, but it won't shake out quite this cleanly in reality. People like me, who have quality health insurance subsidized by their employers, will likely see an increase in overall cost of healthcare, which will be balanced out by many less-privileged people seeing a decrease, and sometimes a large one. Also, healthy people who do not currently have health insurance will necessarily be paying more than previously. Of course, they'll then have health insurance, so over time they will come out ahead, but it might be hard to make that clear to them.

I'm not trying to argue against M4A here, but I think leftists and more progressive libs have a tendency to underestimate the scale of the healthcare issue, and I think that breeds skepticism among those we need to get on board with the policy if it's ever going to be enacted. Being upfront about what it will take to make it happen, I think, helps people see a policy proposal as more credible.

[–] corgiwithalaptop@hexbear.net 3 points 1 month ago

Well, damn, thank you for correcting me!