Your last sentence IS the issue. How many $trillions would a medicare type system for everyone cost? What will that cost every family? Every working taxpayer?
Personally, I'd have no problem with everyone having health care but I do have reasonable concerns about:
1. Government run anything. You want to make a mess of it? You want waste? Just have the government take it over.
2. If we were to have such a system, what is the financial incentive for people to become doctors? Some doctors do their work just to serve humanity, but if I'm a physician, I don't know that I want to work for government wages. I have a physician friend that makes $750K. I was shocked that he made so little with his ed, the hours he works, the strain it puts on him, etc...Give me my little $100K any day.
3. We already have a shortage of providers. We already have to wait four weeks for an appointment.
4. Cost of such a program would grossly increase our tax burden. Look at some of the numbers even the dems suggest it would cost. Unaffordable.
How about this: Allow a medicare type option for basic care...basic preventive and essential care for the poor and elderly. Just to keep you reasonably healthy and alive care. Allow physicians to opt in or out of treating those clients. Maybe have all med students practice 2 years in this system. Allow the rest of us to select our own insurance providers; our own doctors, hospitals,etc.... Allow insurers to decide what type clients they will accept with stipulations: they cover a generational cross section of clients, proportionate males/females. Once covered, they can never drop you.
If you have a pre-existing condition and don't have insurance, if a private company won't take you, you can always go into the medicare option.
I'd hate to see a situation where a poor person is not afforded the same care as a wealthy person, but the bottom line is this: IMO, it's not right to MAKE someone pay more in order to cover someone else. If a person wants to help the less fortunate, that's a personal choice and there are avenues for for that.
1. How much will it cost? Evidenced by the dozens of other examples of like systems...about 40% less than what we currently spend. Even Switzerland which is the next highest is 20% less How can you continue to ignore the examples of every other industrialized nation that spends substantially less per citizen than the US?
Health consumption expenditures per capita, U.S. dollars, PPP adjusted, 2017
United States $10,224
Switzerland $8,009
Germany $5,728
Sweden $5,511
Austria $5,440
Netherlands $5,386
Comparable Country Average $5,280
France $4,902
Canada $4,826
Belgium $4,774
Japan $4,717
Australia $4,543
United Kingdom $4,246
2. What are the financial incentives to become doctors? Ram, physicians make more in Switzerland on average than they do in the US. Averages of $237,106 vs $208,560. That said, I'm not sure that I want docs that are more interested in how much they make than their desire to help heal. Also, what professions offer better compensation and is someone who wants to be a doc going to be happy doing it? You also seem to forget that it hasn't been all that long ago that physician compensation wasn't that extreme. Docs have always done well and would continue to do so.
3. We have a shortage of providers? There is a shortage in more rural areas because there are fewer people with coverage and they have to be willing to eat more bad debt. Larger percentage of people on Medicaid that has lower reimbursement rates. That's why hospitals are closing and moving to larger population areas. Medicare for all or universal care in general would actually encourage doctors to serve in underserved areas because their compensation would be the same as in the city. Add a lower cost of living and it's a win-win for both the doc and rural America.
BTW, if I want to schedule a physical or other "well care" then it can be months to get an appointment. If I'm sick, if YOU are sick or otherwise in need of immediate care you know damn well you could get in to see that doctor today.
4. Again this is the same as your #1. Do I again have to remind you how much you are paying...that we all currently pay? How is the burden of paying for healthcare insurance not a tax? We will spend nearly $4T this year alone. IT COSTS LESS!!!
We already have Medicare and Medicaid that cover the poor and elderly. The problem with that is that it all uses the same infrastructure that is built for the larger system. An infrastructure that is built to profit each entity and not designed to deliver the best care in the most efficient manner. We do so much for convenience it costs us dearly.
Hospitals have the duplication of equipment and facilities to compete with the hospital down the road.
No doctor is required to accept Medicare or Medicaid patients. And it isn't the cost of the physician that is breaking the system...it's the facility cost. For my wife's cancer treatment about 8% of the $250k+ went to pay the doctors. Her torn labrum...the surgeon's bill was $3500...the OR/Recovery was $25K...the total cost for the surgery was $32K Money is saved by making the system more efficient.
You keep saying that nobody should have to pay for other people's care...do you not realize that we already do so? The below chart is 12 yrs old so you can imagine the figures today but you don't think that the cost of that half-billion of uncompensated care wasn't shifted to paying patients? Who do you think pays?