Consider this idea. What we already pay in income taxes should be enough to provide us with healthcare.
Simplistic ideas don’t stand up to reality.
The first sentence is pretty accurate, the overall average effective income tax rate is a little over 14%, but that is skewed as the lower 50% of taxpayers are at 3.7%.
The thing is all our income taxes and more are already spoken for-and much of it for healthcare.
The federal government will spend roughly $7.0 trillion in FY2025. The budget looks like this:
Social Security: $1.60 trillion
Defense: $893 billion
Medicare: $988 billion
Interest on the debt: $970 billion
Nondefense discretionary: $980 billion
Medicaid: $668 billion
Income-security programs: $539 billion
Other mandatory programs: $397 billion
Individual income taxes supplied about $2.7 trillion, or roughly 39% of all federal spending.
The remainder came primarily from payroll taxes, corporate income taxes, customs duties and other revenues, plus $1.8 trillion of new borrowing to cover the deficit.
$2.7 trillion of income tax revenue versus total health spending estimated at $5.26 trillion
Medicare: $1.12 trillion (includes spending in excess of budget)
Medicaid: $0.93 trillion
All estimated health care related spending except Medicare & Medicaid: $3.22 trillion
That $3.22 trillion includes:
Private health insurance: $1.64 trillion
Out-of-pocket spending: $557 billion
Other third-party payers/programs: ~$433 billion
Other health programs and public health: the remainder
CMS reports that private insurance alone represented 31% of national health expenditures, while out-of-pocket spending represented another 11%.
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