The eye-popping cost of Medicare for All

[dpibel]

86. What?

I'm sorry. What do you mean?

That number--$3.5 trillion in 2017--is all spending on all health care in the U.S.

From the link (emphasis supplied):

"The National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA) are the official estimates of total health care spending in the United States. Dating back to 1960, the NHEA measures annual U.S. expenditures for health care goods and services, public health activities, government administration, the net cost of health insurance, and investment related to health care. The data are presented by type of service, sources of funding, and type of sponsor.

"U.S. health care spending grew 3.9 percent in 2017, reaching $3.5 trillion or $10,739 per person. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.9 percent."

That is what is spent in the U.S. on all health care: young, old, and everything in between.

So I honestly cannot even comprehend what you mean when you say, "Currently, the entire spending comes from older, at-risk people."

I guess you believe that the $3.5 trillion is the annual cost of Medicare. It's not. You can check it out.

Simple truth: We already spend $3.5 trillion a year on health care in the U.S. Some of it is via taxes (Medicare and Medicaid). Some of it is via insurance premiums. Some of it is out of pocket.

But the "young, healthy" people are already paying for their share of it, even if it's via the relatively invisible means of their employers paying health insurance premiums on their behalf.