So how many billions of dollars would society save if...

[LAS14]

... we just gave everyone the health care the provider thought they needed, and gave everyone a base income that would cover modest housing and groceries, no questions asked?

Thank of the savings in salaries of people who had to design telophone answering menus, and status reports, and conduct investigations into whether a particular open heart surgery was warranted or not?

Billions, and billions, I'm sure!

[Blue Owl]

1. Oh but then a couple sick fuck billionaires with power trips couldn't get off on being cruel

Is probably what it all boils down to...

[dlk]

2. When there is no middleman, costs are much lower

Health insurance companies collect premiums and deny or pay claims, essentially paperwork. Without them, how many $billions, could be saved?

[Greg_In_SF]

3. If we gave

every adult even just $25,000 per year that would cost $6.5 Trillion every year. So, in ten years, our national debt would go from $38 Trillion to $103 Trillion. It's simply not possible.

[Wounded Bear]

7. If all of that was paid for by Musk, he'd still have $300 billion...

Tax the rich.

[leftstreet]

8. +1

I could get by on that

[Lurker Deluxe]

9. Think you missed three zeros

Trillion to billion …

No one could be taxed trillions …

[Greg_In_SF]

10. I'm not sure what you mean

Elon Musk is worth about 1/2 a Trillion. How would we tax him 6.5 Trillion annually?

And, it’s not like he has 1/2 Trillion sitting in a bank. That’s his net worth - all his companies, houses, cars, etc. right down to his kitchen knives.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. But there are people who know little about medicine

and run to the doctor for every sniffle and hangnail.

The thing is, we are treating disease. Living responsibly to prevent disease is far cheaper (just like preventive maintenance on a car), but first we have to overcome the vested interests that feed off sickness, and in many instances make you sick because either they don't know what they're doing or they like to line their pockets. And that doesn't even being to scratch the pathologizing of illness in the mental health field.

[Torchlight]

5. No questions asked, eh?

[crud]

6. Tax the use of AI

to pay for it. Thomas Paine: agrarian justice

"Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before."
– Thomas Paine

https://www.ssa.gov/history/paine4.html

[Greg_In_SF]

11. The federal government

doesn't even take in $5 Trillion in annual revenue now. There's no way you could tax the use of AI to the tune of an additional $6.5 Trillion.