Economists: Every family basically pays $8000 'poll tax' under current US health system. [View all]

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Working families will soon realize that those scaring them by insisting they will pay more with a single payer system are not being square with them in the primary debates over the future of the healthcare system.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/every-american-family-basically-pays-an-8000-poll-tax-under-the-u-s-health-system-top-economists-say/?

Every American family basically pays an $8,000 ‘poll tax’ under the U.S. health system, top economists say

AN DIEGO — The United States’ sky-high health-care costs are so far above what people pay in other countries that they are the equivalent of a hefty tax, Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton say. They are surprised Americans aren’t revolting against these taxes.

“A few people are getting very rich at the expense of the rest of us,” Case said at conference in San Diego on Saturday. The U.S. health-care system is “like a tribute to a foreign power, but we’re doing it to ourselves.”

The U.S. health-care system is the most expensive in the world, costing about $1 trillion more per year than the next-most-expensive system — Switzerland’s. That means U.S. households pay an extra $8,000 per year, compared with what Swiss families pay. Case and Deaton view this extra cost as a “poll tax,” meaning it is levied on every individual regardless of ability to pay. (Most Americans think of a poll tax as money people once had to pay to register to vote, but “polle” was an archaic German word for “head.” The idea behind a poll tax is that it falls on every head.)

Despite paying $8,000 more a year than anyone else, American families do not have better health outcomes, the economists argue. Life expectancy in the United States is lower than in Europe.

“We can brag we have the most expensive health care. We can also now brag that it delivers the worst health of any rich country,” Case said.

Case and Deaton, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, made the critical remarks about U.S. health care during a talk at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting, where thousands of economists gather to discuss the health of the U.S. economy and their latest research on what’s working and what’s not.
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poll tax
/ˈpōl ˌtaks/
noun
a tax levied on every adult, without reference to income or resources.