The current state of healthcare in the US is a joke.

[BanginJimmy]

Our taxes are paying for poor people who don't have insurance to get treatment. This tax won't go away and instead will get rolled in with the new one.

No one pays any more than what they're paying already, except that more people are now paying into it. The average person pays a premium to the company they work for, the company pays the rest. Instead of that money going to BCBS, it goes to UHS instead, and you see it on your check stub at the end of the week. You make it progressive just like income tax, poor people pay a little less, rich people pay a little more.

Those without a job are still on "Medicare", this system doesn't change and instead gets rolled into UHS. You, the worker are still taxed the same for this as well.

Those wanting elective treatments (your "better care") pay the difference. Those that want cosmetic plastic surgery (implants, botox, etc.)pay 100%. Out of pocket.

Tourists and illegal immigrants either pay with the insurance they already have, bill their resident country, bill the patient, or eat it. But now since most citizens are insured, hospitals are eating a lot less.

Housing and college are completely different kinds of markets that Healthcare is not the same and usually stops with the insurance company. There's no transparency in healthcare, and no one does comparison shopping for healthcare

You can decide when you want to buy a house, or a car, or go to school. You DON'T decide when you get shot, or get cancer.

So like I said, you want to add 260mil more people to medicare.

Think of it this way. Using 2011 numbers and approximating total rolls to be 6x the current medicare rolls, UHS would cost 3.17T a year.

Of course, you know medicare reimbursement rates will be forced to rise to actually cover the cost of the care. We will call it 10%, which equals another 55B a year using 2011 medicare spending and enrollment, so around 317B more when you add in 260mil more people to the rolls.

Fraud will also rise ~6x, call that another 240B a year in additional spending.

You can also expect 2-300B more a year for the massive bureaucracy that would be created. That bureaucracy would likely also cause docs to raise their rates even more to compensate.

These are all low estimates, especially reimbursement rates, and I would expect the price tag to be FAR higher because anything involved with the govt costs more than it does in the private sector.

BTW, total US spending on health care in 2011 was around 2.9T.