General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Bernie Sanders talks universal Medicare, and 1.1 million people click to watch him [View all]ehrnst
(32,640 posts)You are talking about many different things, and proposing Single Payer as the panacea.
Single payer is not the way most countries acheive universal health care coverage. Yes, we have a system that has had private insurance baked since the 1940's.
Certainly setting out city streets on a grid is more efficient and navigatable, and even cheaper to maintain, but retrofitting a grid layout onto an existing city is a much, much different beast, with different costs and obstacles than starting out with that layout and growing from there. You would not be able to retrofit without disruption, demolition and making a lot of people very unhappy about the changes - even if you did it over 40 years, let alone 8, like Sanders proposes.
I, too lived in the UK and had single payer, so yes, that gives me personal experience. But I also have more of a background in health policy than you do, as indicated by your posts.
On quarter of Medicare patients pay about 20% or more of their income in out of pocket costs for health care, so yes, it costs more than "what is taken out of your paycheck."
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2017/may/medicare-out-of-pocket-cost-burdens
For instance, Canadians pay about 30% of their medical costs out of pocket, and health care costs are 11.1% of the GDP. The US is 17.6%
Keeping drug costs down is a battle in Canada and other countries:
http://healthydebate.ca/2015/03/topic/pharmacare-2