But if we enact single payer, your taxes will go up!

[kristopher]

123. I don't exactly understand your point

I see the point of the OP as being not so much to make a written-in-stone proposal but rather to compare a 'government' health care solution to a 'private sector' health care solution - thus the use of 'taxes' vs 'premiums'.

In actual practice how you collect the money wouldn't have a bearing on the way you apportion responsibility for payment. You can make either method of collection a progressive system related to income.

I lived in Japan for a long time and raised a family with two children there. Our premium (about $110/mo in the 80s-90s) was set when we filed our taxes, and was collected as part of the monthly (no one is paid weekly) withholdings from my pay. However, unlike a tax, if I didn't want to participate in the national health program, I could easily opt out.
So the opt out provision is distinctly different than what we think of as a tax, even though the method of setting the amount of the premium and collecting it was via the tax structure.

One more thing - filing taxes there involved taking my yearly pay statement, together with a postcard sent to me by the government as a reminder, to a local government office. I'd go to the counter, they'd check their records of my previous filings, confirm the size of my family and then fill out about 6 blanks on the reminder postcard they'd sent me.

That was it, about 5-10 minutes in and out. Everyone who has income, no matter how low it might be, pays at least a pittance in taxes.