Jim Murray

2 years ago ·

Post by Jim
>
Post
Let us ask how much would it cost for the US to have a British-style National Health Service which covers 100% of the population? Well, the current NHS budget is £133 billion (pounds). If you were to apply that to a population the size of America's (approx 5 times the size of the UK) it would cost you £665 billion to provide healthcare for a country with the USA's population. At current exchange rates that works out to $851 billion USD. So for $851 billion, the US government could provide healthcare to 100% of its population. How much does the US federal government spend right now on healthcare? The combined Medicare & Medicaid budget for 2016 was $970 billion, and the VA budget for veterans healthcare was $70 billion. So in total, the US federal government spends $1,040 billion on healthcare in a single year to cover veterans, over 65s and the bottom 10%. For $851 billion they could provide healthcare to 100% of the population, and still have enough money left over to give a $200 billion tax cut to the American people, or reduce the deficit. It's amazing that right now the US government actually spends more on healthcare than it would cost to provide a universal healthcare system, European-style. This is without even getting into the $2.2 trillion in private healthcare spending that would suddenly be freed up as people no longer needed private health insurance, and could be spent on other things.
#NHS #National Health Service #US #healthcare #America
Comments

Zacharias 🐝 Voulgaris

2 years ago #1

Intriguing. Now I understand why many Americans retire abroad…

More posts from Jim Murray

View posts
1 week ago

Stories in Readable Format

Jim Murray · I have finally been able to convert my stories into into PDF files which makes them easily readable on iPads and other hand held devices.If you‘d like to have any or all of these stories emailed to you, just email me at onandup3@gmail.com and I will send them to youYou can find d ...

1 week ago

I used to be a poet

Jim Murray ·

3 weeks ago

Couch Potato Chronicles: Slow Horses

Jim Murray ·

Articles from Jim Murray

View blog
1 year ago · 2 min. reading time

The Idiot Class

(I wrote this post after the 2016 election and updated it after the 2020 election. Sad to say these ...

1 year ago · 2 min. reading time

How Powerful Is Your Mind?

Two years ago I returned home from a four month ordeal that included major spinal surgery, that took ...

1 year ago · 4 min. reading time

Yadda Yadda Yadda And A Partridge in A Pear Tree A Christmas Memory

(This is from my Couch Potato Chronicles column Circa 2000 AD.) · We’re having the worst snow storm ...

Related content

8 years ago

Jim Murray

Welcome To My Trumpathon…Hope You Can Handle It.

Even though I am a Canadian, and happy to be one, I have a life long and abiding interest in politics in the United States, as do many of my countrypersons. Mainly because a lot of what happens to the US usually happens to us about 20 minutes later. · This election year is especi ...

7 years ago

Jim Murray

Mid Week Rant #289. America The Land Of Paradoxes.

Before we came up from the family room we watched a little bit of CNN. We hit it just in time to see Donald Trump give his Super Tuesday victory speech.For some reason, we watched pretty much the whole damn thing. · And I think it was because he didn’t sound like the bat-shoo ...

7 years ago

Jim Murray

A Love Letter To Donald Trump

On Fridays I like to write about the stuff I have been thinking about that has relatively little to do with the business of marketing. Today I thought I’d write a letter to Donald Trump. · I have become an avid Trump watcher, in the way that people who pass a car wreck on the hi ...

7 years ago

Jim Murray

The Great American Divide And The Mystery It Represents

Anybody who follows me knows that I write a lot about bullshit. · More than a few people think I am a bit obsessed with it. But the simple fact of the matter is that for any writer who cares about his fellow humanoids, the concept of bullshit will seep into just about anything t ...

7 years ago

Jim Murray

The Dumbing Down Of America Is Almost Complete. Can The Rest Of The World Be Far Behind?

Exactly a decade ago, Mike Judge wrote (along with Ethan Coen) and direct a movie called Idiocracy. · It was about a US army private who was, as part of an military experiment, put into suspended animation and awakened 500 years later to find the experiment had long since bee ...

7 years ago

Jim Murray

My Series Of Mini-Rants Called “The Trumpanzee Cage”

One of the people I despise most on the planet is Donald Trump. There are many reason for this. All of which he is not only guilty of being, but has actually boasted about. · For some strange reason he has been captivating the simple minded in America to the extent where it has g ...

Related professionals