Conservatives Want To Raise the Medicare Eligibility Threshold To Make It Easier To End Medicare

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1. One way to think about this

Germany spends 12% of GDP on healthcare. The U.S. spends 18%. Virtually of Germany could be considered a single payer public system. The public portion of our system pays 50% through a variety of funding vehicles including Medicare withholding, Medicare premiums, federal worker and retiree payment of premiums, general tax revenue (state and federal), and borrowing. So right now if our costs equalled Germany we would be sitting at 9% of public sector payments for healthcare without a dollar more in additional revenue (still have to address the borrowing though). Most private company provided healthplans are subsidized by the tax code. How much additional revenue would that represent? Could we get to a 8%/8% of all income to support a single payer system? Would employers be willing to pass along the savings from not providing healthcare to their employees?

Germany is at 15% approximately split between employer and employee.