Let us ask how much would it cost for the US to have a British-style National Health Service which covers 100% of the population? Well, the current NHS budget is £133 billion (pounds). If you were to apply that to a population the size of America's (approx 5 times the size of the UK) it would cost you £665 billion to provide healthcare for a country with the USA's population. At current exchange rates that works out to $851 billion USD. So for $851 billion, the US government could provide healthcare to 100% of its population. How much does the US federal government spend right now on healthcare? The combined Medicare & Medicaid budget for 2016 was $970 billion, and the VA budget for veterans healthcare was $70 billion. So in total, the US federal government spends $1,040 billion on healthcare in a single year to cover veterans, over 65s and the bottom 10%. For $851 billion they could provide healthcare to 100% of the population, and still have enough money left over to give a $200 billion tax cut to the American people, or reduce the deficit. It's amazing that right now the US government actually spends more on healthcare than it would cost to provide a universal healthcare system, European-style. This is without even getting into the $2.2 trillion in private healthcare spending that would suddenly be freed up as people no longer needed private health insurance, and could be spent on other things.
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