For context, the entire Earth is like $500 trillion. So they are saying it would cost about half the world economy to do what many counties do for a few billion.
The numbers are from Cato institute but are seriously flawed. Healthcare would cost less than we’re paying now by a wide margin. Also, They aren’t measuring year to year, it’s every 10 years. So they’re saying every year it’ll cost 4t. Not really. It would be net less than we’re paying
Yeah, that's because the only way conservatives can argue is in bad faith. The numbers only work for their argument when you ignore half of them. They take the total cost of a program and add it to the budget and act like we wouldn't save money over the next 10 years by eliminating the current thing that costs 5 trillion and instituing a plan that costs only 4 trillion. Nothing they say can ever be taken at face value, even if it appears factually correct at first glance, it's always a misdirect.
And for numbers like healthcare, I am sure they are assuming that prices under a healthcare-for-all scheme would be the same as what they are now under the we-choose-who-lives scheme we all suffer from.
Bingo. Their argument assumes that the government just pays premiums to companies like United Healthcare, like that makes any fucking sense. The entire graph is built on lies.
Healthcare would cost less than we’re paying now by a wide margin.
IIRC it isn't that wide of a margin from what we are paying all together at the moment. A lot of the "wide margin" estimates I have seen are based off of European countries costs which you can't really fully translate over here. A big thing that will inflate our costs is rural access to medicine. The vast majority of our country is rural and for a lot of medical resources you can't just allocate them for x number of people, you have to think about the distances too. Having the nearest hospital with a cardiac cath lab be 3+ hours away is not good. (I know these situations are present currently, and that is a bad thing)
It’s probably accurate but over the course of like 10 years. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that healthcare number and that’s what that is… nevermind we’d spend like 3x that with our current system.
If we take the average of high income nations with single payer healthcare, ut would be about 2.6 trillion a year, so 26 trillion over 10 years, not 40.
Currently we spend about twice that, which would mean the current system fits the number listed. Probably where the number comes from in the first place.
(So yes, it costing trillions a year is realistic, seeming high compared to other first world nations, but we have to keep in mind that the US is more populous than any of the others are. by a factor of more than 2)
I've never played this game, but this character in particular has so many quotable moments I keep seeing over the years, I'll have to try it out... just for that.
The simple fact is, Republicans have never forgiven us for electing FDR. For nearly 100 years they've been waiting for their moment, biding their time, and then they finally found their man with Trump. Why else would they be bringing back Smoot-Hawley, destroying our WWII system of alliances, and ushering in a new Gilded Age?
Hitler was a big fan of the Trail of Tears, though he thought it needlessly cruel. He felt he could do it more efficiently and without that needless cruelty. Trains, concentration camps, and gas chambers.
And ironically those high taxes are the only reason the “American Dream” was ever even a thing. Republicans want all the benefits of telling people they’re living the dream but they don’t want to pay for it.
The American Dream didn’t just happen. It took the government stepping in and protecting the people from a tyrannical capitalist class sucking them dry. That’s why Republicans hate regulation. Corporations bribe our politicians millions to let them abuse us.
Thats why letting people amass this kind of wealth is bad. When you can throw around life changing money you can buy anyone, including entire governments. Before Russia or MAGA or any of that captured our government, the rich did.
The American Dream seems to have changed for them. Now the American Dream is like the Squid Games and if you can survive the conditions that extreme capitalism has created you’ve earned it, it’s not for the masses anymore.
You can be immediately dismiss this because it doesn't have any time frame. 211T over 100 years sounds like "Hey, that's a lot closer to reasonable. Maybe there's a way."
It so doesn't compare to current costs. What does private insurance cost the US every year?
Here's my biggest common sense statement supporting Medicare For All: We won't have to pay private insurance C-Suite staff. That money is paid today with the current health care system, so hold exactly the lackluster system we have and save certainly hundreds of millions, if not billions.
Not to mention dividends to investors, advertising costs, or a significant share of litigation awards (the amount allocated to cover medical and therapeutic costs). Yet the disingenuous act like those costs are all going to persist under universal healthcare.
This is probably really naive because I've never known a world without the internet, but I was thinking last night of one way the Internet is actually a net positive on the world besides just "convenience", but man I really couldn't think of anything. Like I'm 100% sure there are lots of positives it brings somewhere that I just don't know about or didn't think about, but it sure doesn't feel like that outweighs all the negatives it's brought. But maybe that says more about how I use the internet than anything else.
While there have been versions of Internet since before I was born, about half of my life was before the Internet became something regular people use regularly.
I would like to add to your list that I am communicating with you now. About 20 minutes ago somewhere in the world (I have no idea where) you made a statement and now I am sitting on my couch and responding to you. I've never met you and you've never met me IRL, but we can hold a real time discussion and learn more about each other.
There are massive flaws, but I feel this connection to humans outside my neighborhood is at the root a good thing.
Yeah that is a great thing, but it still doesn't feel like that outweighs the negatives. In the right hands the Internet is a great tool, the problem is when it's in everyone's hands most of them don't know how to use the thing and they're just flailing around wildy with it. The two dumbest people in the planet can now connect and spread their dumbass ideas to more people. I also feel like I'm just as guilty with doing that as the next person online. The Internet was the best thing to happen to cults.
40 trillion dollars for universal healthcare is fucking insane. Thats like ten times as much as the more accurate estimates of 4 trillion which, again as anyone who knows anything about this will tell you, expert analyses of the current system versus a single payer universal system is it would save money. It would be CHEAPER.
Also, reparations? Seriously? Fucking reparations? Who in the DSA is actively talking about reparations.
Maybe Darializa??
And even if 5 farther left candidates get into the house, this would never happen. No one is seriously talking about reparations.
When you watch Fox as a Democrat or left leaning person you really can understand how they can so easily brainwash people. I mean they just fucking lie constantly. It’s astonishing just how brazen they are.
Leaving aside for a second the totally made up vibeonomics, why do people persistently rally against spending tax, their own money, on the society they live in? Why is spending, not least these socially positive ideas, a bad thing?
Do a republican one, where the spending proposals include missiles for Israel, ICE expansion, and corporate handouts via VIP lanes.
The funny thing is that many programs do have a net benefit on society in a financial sense. The returns are just not the in-your-face returns like cold, hard cash in the form of stimulus checks or the like.
I think it's partially because Republicans paradoxically don't trust the government and are fine with seeing all these departments and programs go away because they think all of that money isn't actually allocated to doing anything outside of getting pocketed by those in government.
You know unlike the blatant and visible stealing of taxpayer money, but if they realize that's happening then to them it's ok because those guys are just playing the game.
Because Americans have been rather uniquely conditioned over the centuries to see ANY taxes as a punishment. That's why one of the most popular slogans on the left is "tax the rich". They're not thinking about getting money to fund something. They just want rich people to suffer.
Well that and they dont actually understand the math or how taxes work. The government doesnt use taxes to fund anything. It doesnt need our money. It just needs votes.
You really think taxing a billionaire more so that they have 900 million instead of a billion is making them suffer? Like genuinely you believe this?
People on the left want to tax the rich specifically because they won't suffer from it. They can afford it and still live a lifestyle that is extremely more comfortable than 99% of the population.
Im not going to speak for others but I just dont find the government to be very efficient at doing anything. They have no true incentive to improve or be better. If they could show taxes would be used to run Healthcare as efficiently as the post office used to then I'd be all for it. Healthcare run on the levels of a dmv? No. Just no.
The right has been breaking the government any chance it can get and then uses that as a reason that government can’t operate efficiently. If money actually went to these programs and they were staffed and run correctly I’m sure it could be run well. But they’d rather spend trillions on private contracts getting their buddies richer. All while we get less and less for our taxes.
Government run programs dont all of sudden magically fix themselves when democrats come into power and then break when republicans get it. Democrats do the exact same things the Republicans do when it comes to enriching their rich friends.
No it doesnt. The post office is proof of two things. The government can potentially run things well but mostly doesnt. And with how quickly the post office was messed up by one administration change it should scare you that anything government run you come to depend on can be destroyed by a vote.
You’re right, and that apathy towards governments worldwide snowballs into a population giving up expecting good things. Not criticising you btw, I’m prone to the feeling too. I also think it’s a matter of political appetite; if enough of a population can demand a certain aspect of society to function better/in a particular way, and make it a single issue voting matter, political parties have to reckon with those demands or wither into obscurity. The best way to prevent expensive policy that requires experts in the field is to disenfranchise voters and their expectations that those same policies are possible in the first place.
The US unfortunately likely wont get any better with a two party system governing it. I hate to be apathetic toward it but its how it is. I specifically brought up the post office because it was proof that a government run system can be efficient. The post office was bringing in revenue at a point even though it didnt have to. It was ruined by decisions made and thats the part that scares me about government run operations. A vote can change it all
I mean, the main alternative to it being a public good is privatizing it, and that is subject to the same sudden changes in decisions affecting the userbase, often at a greater cost and simultaneously worse service over time.
Privatization has the threat of competition that forces certain standards always be met. Government run systems also contract almost everything now to private companies anyway so almost any argument in favor or government running something has a lot of holes in it.
Competition only works when demand is elastic and people have the choice to not use a service without significant negative impact to their life, if there even is competition to begin with, or if the service is even reasonably profitable enough to be privatized. Many services have specifically either been fundamentally inelastic—like healthcare—while others have spent decades forcing geographic monopolies—like electric and water companies. The postal service offers services that can't be profitable like mailing to extremely low-demand areas as well, which corporations are unwilling to foot the cost for. Privatization has a long history of reducing, or even wholesale removing, competition, so it's nowhere near the silver bullet you seem to think it is.
Nobody said it was a silver bullet. Its just a more feasible solution. Nothing you just said eliminates the fact that privatization always has a threat of competition. You are also conveniently ignoring the flaw with government run programs. Democracy itself. Democracy always has a loser and anything run by the democratic system can be changed by a simple administration change. Congress could decide tomorrow to completely gut social security and there would be fuck all the American people could do about it. They would be forced to rely on funds from various other retirement programs that come from privatization instead.
But nothing you've said makes the case that it's anymore feasible than public programs. That "threat of competition" is practically nonexistent for multiple extremely vital sectors, and it's only getting worse as they continue to dig their grubby fingers even deeper into the legislation.
You're also completely ignoring the fact that those privatized services are also consistently prone to fucking over the userbase all the time. Like I said before, they're just as prone, if not even more so due to the need to constantly maximize profits at the behest of literally everyone else, to worse services at higher prices. That's something that's not even limited to services that should be, or used to be, public and is seen all over the private sector. Literally none of what you've been talking about is unique to government-run programs, let alone more likely than private ones.
There are often people on the inside working against society’s interests for the sake of “proving government is inefficient” or “capitalism is best”. If we could fill the ranks with people who value society, it would be less inefficient.
What I don’t understand is why so many Americans are against paying for an NHS, which is most likely thousands less than your yearly insurance and it’s not tied to your employer.
Our NHS is funded by approximately 1.5% of your taxable income. That’s calculated yearly. So if you’re on $100k a year, that’s like a grand. That’s it. That’s all you pay for your healthcare.
I got a job offer recently in the US, 21$/hr, with healthcare benefits for the low low price of 496$ per paycheck (semi-monthly)for myself, my wife, and my child. so without Copays and deductibles, that would have been... 27% of my income.
But yeah Americans are afraid of increased taxes because of healthcare...
the most expensive healthcare system, and the least effective out of any high income country, including Switzerland, which is second most expensive, because for some odd reason my people refuse to go single payer.
Like one guy I saw put it: "The American healthcare system is like a diamond mesh condom: expensive, full of holes, and fails entirely at it's core function."
I assume these numbers are over ten years, which is usually how political parties, specifically the Republican party, likes to quantify things so the numbers are shocking. So for example, spending $4-7.5T/yr is not far out of line with what is currently spent in the US, which is around 18% of the GDP or about $5T per year.
I think that 5T will also grow over that 10 years. It gets paid to people that need to show growth every quarter. That 5T will be 9T and growing at this pace.
And, I think the 7.5 would be flat over 10.
It might even make universal healthcare the better option fiscally. Is that fair to say?
Love how there isn't a source. Super disingenuous, even for FOX News, cause they know their audience will take it at face value without doing research.
Not to defend the numbers, but there's actually a source if you look at the bottom of the image. It's just that this is a physical photo taken diagonally and it seems they are watching it through streaming with the time bar covering it, alongside some reflections from the lamps. I can't make it out fully but I do read the "institute".
Considering the graph itself is about estimates, I'm guessing the years are preceded by something like "projection". Kinda weird considering presidential elections are in 2028.
The source is a study by the Cato Institute (authored by Adam N. Michel, Director of Tax Policy Studies), claiming to estimate the cost of major policy items in the DSA platform and scaled them as a share of cumulative projected US GDP over a 10-year window (2027–2036),
I wrote a paper on universal healthcare a while ago. It would cost the US about $4.5B a year. When you do the math on how much extra tax money an individual would pay in yearly, you will realize you find more money laying on the ground.
4.5 billion, and let’s say roughly half the US population ends up paying that equally. That’s about 170 million people.
Thats about $27 a person. And that’s likely to cause insurance premiums to fall to little or nothing. Doctor visits and ambulance rides are suddenly not financially devastating. So the only thing you got wrong is where people would find more money.
Yeah, we spend about 5 trillion a year. Over 10 years, it's 50 trillion. So if we hit that lower estimate, we'll save 10 trillion. Like, CATO accidentally made an argument in favor of this. Paying for everyone and it'll be cheaper? Lets sign the fuck up!
Devil's advocate, but the DSA website does genuinely call for reparations. As well as some other kinda crazy shit like getting rid of the senate and giving more power to the executive. Thankfully most DSA politicians are more moderate than their platform itself
The platform is aspirational, not functional policy. Prison abolition too. They're not saying enough the prisons and close them, it's about moving away from the prison industrial complex that unnecessarily locks to millions of poor folks and strips them of many of their rights. There will always be a need for some semblance of 'prison' but it doesn't need to look anything like the millstone we have now.
The point is we have a whole bunch of people who never had the chance to make generational wealth while others did from their ancestors' blood sweat and tears. It went on well beyond slavery and continues today.
As a responsible society we need to do something to lift those people out of poverty. We need to take them out of the ghettos we've shoved them into. It will be much better for our economy and society above all for us to do it.
Like most things it's being purposefully lied about. The oligarchy makes literal billions off prison slavery. They benefit from people thinking their money will be taken and black people will be living better than they currently do rather than the truth that society, as a whole, will be uplifted.
I'm a white American but my parents were immigrants. My family didn't take part in chattel slavery or even Jim crow. I don't have race based generational wealth. How do we choose who pays reparations?
I'm not sure DSA's particular stance on it, but most people talking about reparations it's about investing in underserved communities, which are historically minority communities, and updating services, modernizing, etc. not providing a one-time paycheck, but building up those parts of society that our government has either never invested in properly or intentionally held down.
It's about equality of opportunity, or, getting closer to that. There is no real meritocracy, but many people falsely assume reparations is about trying to achieve equality of outcome. It's just about leveling the playing field a tiny bit. If you are building a castle it's easier to do it on bedrock than in a swamp you've been assigned to.
That's not what the DSA is proposing. The executive would be more like a PM than a president. In a theoretical scenario the new amendment would mean they'd answer to Congress and could be recalled or overruled at any time. If that's combined with a Congress that has good proportional representation with smaller districts than we have currently. Did you know when the constitution was written, there were about 30,000 people for each representative? It's over 770,000 now. We used to keep adding to Congress as the country grew, but over the years, laws have been passed to limit the expansion of Congress and to allow money into politics. I personally think it was on purpose, but he result of that, intentional or not has been to turn the People's house into a 21st century aristocracy. You have to be rich and connected already to have any shot in most house elections, so the people we end up electing pass laws to further secure their own elite status and funding for their next election campaign rather than serving their constituents.
I got a flyer in the mail for a state political race that read "so-and-so wants to implement democratic socialism and close hospitals!" And it had a 1 as a footnote. I looked at the tiny print at the bottom of it and I'm 100% serious it said "Source: Facebook"
These are absolute nonsense numbers, of course. Universal healthcare would cost a negative number, since it would be dramatically cheaper than our current ridiculous healthcare costs.
Also, the idea that guaranteeing everyone a job would somehow cost <checks notes> almost four times the entire GDP of the United States is...deranged.
OK, now compare that to what we actually spend on bloated defense contracts and tax breaks for billionaires, among other bullshit.
Edit: Or the sheer amount of money that private insurers suck out of the average person's wallet, all while denying claims left and right. Or the total amount of medical debt carried in the country.
I mean in our current system we spend around 6 trillion on total healthcare expenditures yearly. Why does the chart just randomly make it over 6 times that amount? Considering they estimate 60% of insurance premiums are spent on administrative, profit and advertising, we eliminate most of that and have one negotiated price, spending would decrease not increase. But hey, I'm guessing this chart isn't meant to apply logic to.
Edit: Nevermind, I saw hidden at the bottom this is over a decade. Honestly 39t on healthcare spending over a decade is reasonable, would be a price worth spending. Could honestly be less than that in a non profit universal healthcare model.
DARVO tactics…. Anyone with a brain can see that the republicans have yet again overspent, meaning a responsible adult will have to pick up the pieces.
Honestly yes all of this is doable. Everyone pays their fair share. Wealthier people pay their fair share and also if corporations are people they need to pay their fair share as well. Then yes all this would be doable at the high end estimates.
Universal healthcare wouldn’t be that expensive. Most of the current cost associated with American healthcare is due to a fraud arms race between medical service providers and health insurance companies where each party is continuously ramping up the prices on everything just to see how much they can get away with charging. Once you remove the for-profit element of the healthcare system, the artificial price inflation of healthcare services, equipment, and medicine also drops drastically to cost to produce, which is usually a fraction of a percent of what is charged.
Reparations don’t need to (and arguably shouldn’t) be a check handed out to descendants of people who have been generationally wronged by previous laws and government policies. They can be paid out in the form of education subsidies and preferential loans for home purchases and small business startups. These are benefits that are already provided to veterans, and have repeatedly been the starting point of generational wealth and change in economic status as people without opportunities are suddenly provided with access to job skills training, higher education, and the opportunity to own property that they otherwise would not have had access to. As a result they have been able to lift their entire families out of poverty while contributing to the nation, economy, and their career field above and beyond anything they would have been capable of without those opportunities.
FDR’s New Deal jobs program wasn’t a net loss to taxpayers, the federal budget, or the economy. More employed people, more income tax revenue, and said employed people were working on tax funded infrastructure projects and other public works representing a common good for the nation. There is no shortage of work that could be nationally subsidized to kickstart an economic recovery through readily available jobs paying viable living wages. Our aging national electric grid is struggling to keep up with the ever increasing demands placed on it resulting in blackouts and brownouts that cost time, money, and sometimes lives (example: Texas every time Ted Cruz goes on vacation), roads in basically every state are deteriorating to to the point of becoming a public safety hazard, and the unmitigated pillaging of natural resources that has been the result of deregulation of corporate interests has generated environmental devastation that could be mitigated or partially reversed by cleanup, conservation, and restoration projects.
Housing for all is similar to universal healthcare in that it suffers from artificial price inflation based on efforts by investors and developers to control the supply and demand. About 10% of the homes in the United States sit vacant. There are more empty houses than there are unhoused people. Even if some of those vacant houses are vacant for reasons based on degraded conditions, maintenance, or safety issues, this seems like another thing that could be easily remedied by a New Deal-style federal jobs program.
The folks over at Fox and those repeating Russian talking points on social media want to see America return to the 1950’s culturally (seeming to value traditional values and the ability to be openly racist and sexist in equal measure) while wholly rejecting the 1950’s economic policies that made things like a single-income household and raising children in a quiet neighborhood possible in the first place.
The saddest part is that if you are American, you already pay for a nonexistent universal healthcare system.
In countries with them, about 8-12% of GDP is spent on healthcare. Many of these are developed countries with older populations than the US, yet they achieve better average healthcare outcomes for things like infant mortality.
In the US its closer to 18% of GDP. Half of that is federal, state or local government spending. The other half is the part where getting cancer can bankrupt you.
Which begs the question - what are you actually paying for?
They always look at these numbers like a household budget instead of an investment. Let’s look at housing. You have suppliers of building materials, labor (carpenters, plumbers, electricians etc), real estate agents and mortgage companies, attorneys, real estate tax. They believe the money just vanishes. People get jobs, people get housing.
Well not if you don't tax the literal dragon's hoard that the most privileged and secure people in this country are sitting on.
Also, trillions? Really? This isn't the Pentagon. Granted, people really don't understand how common graft is in government contracting. It's the reason why many municipalities legally cannot just hire people to fix potholes, since that'd prevent a very overpriced and lucrative contract going to a private company. It's just another way capital has rigged the system.
Starting with the premise of evaluating any policy by dollar figure, especially without considering the entirety of the federal budget is a con and a dodge
Oh Danice you poor thing, asking your Facebook friends to agree with your braindead post so you can feel good about ruining the future for your kids isn’t doable either sweetie
Even the smallest whisper of wasteful spending from conservatives should be laughed into oblivion after the ballrooms, tax-payer ads, ICE budgets, military spending, on and on and on.
Their credibility (if it ever existed) has been burnt to a crisp and scattered to the wind.
Whereas months ago they were all crying about the need for the Big Bullshit Bill which was one of the most expensive packages in US history and will drive the deficit up by nearly 5 trillion dollars. 5 trillion isn’t even an amount of money that makes sense so I have no clue who’s ass they pulled these numbers out of
I don’t want socialized healthcare. The government fucks up everything they touch and I choose to not let the DMV run my healthcare. On top of that, the high level of our healthcare in the US is because there is a financial incentive and investment into it. Being a highly skilled doctor is going to draw a lower tier of person if it is a $90k/year government job.
You HAVE socialized healthcare. It's just that instead of spending the money on everyone equally and pushing costs of treatments down, your money is being spent on keeping the ghouls in congress alive when they already look like their bedroom's in the back yard.
This still doesn't address the core of their concern. (which happens to be my concern as well). I understand that the current healthcare system is a clusterf*ck and needs to be overhauled. However giving the gvmt more power over the funding of our healthcare system is a hard sell for me. I really dont want Trump and his ilk in charge of a national healthcare system. And I dont trust the US general population to vote for candidates that could intelligently run it. The whole system hinges on an educated population that votes in their best interest and the last decade or so has proven to me that this is not the case. How many times has our gmvt shut down because of a funding bill issue . How would adding our healthcare into that mix benefit anyone.
Most likely a gross underestimate, but this is an estimate of campaign promises not reality so no one can predict the exact scale of the proposed boondoggle fiasco debacle catastrophe being proposed.
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u/Unreal_Alexander 13h ago
Lmao throwing a "T" on the end of the numbers.
For context, the entire Earth is like $500 trillion. So they are saying it would cost about half the world economy to do what many counties do for a few billion.