General Discussion
Showing Original Post only (View all)The cost of single payer .... the math at my house. [View all]
My husband is currently on chemo. He's on a medicare advantage plan. I am too young for medicare. I have recently had to stop working but was self employed. I still have some income from my store (run by hired staff). I buy medical care insurance through Kynect, which is targeted to be closed.
We have spent enough on medical care the last 8 years to be able to itemize it on our taxes and get a deduction. Prior to 2013 that means anything over 7.5 % and thereafter anything over 10%.
With single payer, if I had to pay a 10% tax on every penny we have coming in as income, including social security benefits, in order to pay for singer payer, we'd be ahead in 2015 by about $2400. If the math holds up as expected in 2016 it will be closer to $3300 we'd be ahead by buying single payer with the rest of America.
*********
My brother and sister in law work for the same medium sized company, who pays 75% of the medical care insurance premiums. They have family coverage including them both and 2 working college age kids. The premium they pay is $688 a month. This means the employer is paying $2064 a month. With deductables and copayments my brother's family spent $11691 on medical care for the 4 of them. The combined income for all 4 of them is $77844 in 2015. Their employer paid an additional $24768.
At a 10% tax for single payer on their income they would have paid $7784 and been ahead $3907. This doesn't even take into account the money their employer spent on premiums instead of wages. Give the employees an extra $12000 each in in come, tax it at 10% for single payer plus whatever regular tax rate they would have and they still come out $1000's ahead every year.
******
Every time someone tells you WE can't afford single payer ask yourself WHO IS "WE". Just follow the money. Predators are everywhere in medical care at at every level. It's one thing to make a good living being a medical care professional, or manufacturing medical devices and treatments, or running a medical care facility. It's quite another to be swimming in gravy while the hungry starve. When the doctor owns the testing machines and constantly sends people for testing on it, or has a relative working at XYZ medical device manufacturer making commission on all the knee replacements, or stents or whatever that are used... which is more common that you think.... it's a recipe for using the sick as cash cows and even making marginal people actually sick.
We've got to chop the the absolutely predatory nature of sick care in this country out of the equation. Whatever it takes.