re: Poll: 74% of democrats believe we can fund single payer HC solely by taxing billionaires

Billionaires are not dumb enough to hold wealth and assets in such a fashion that would allow themselves to be taxed

These people are idiots.

74% of dims are morons…

It’s comical and they say this so it’s an easy sell

“You won’t have to pay anything and you’ll get free healthcare”. “We’ll tax the evil greedy billionaires to pay for it”
But- the- math-doesn't’- work!


Estimates of what it costs to pay for the medical needs of everyone in this country are between 12,000 - $18,000 per person.

350 million people x $12,000 is $4.2 TRILLION! A year! And that’s the low end. You can bet it’s closer to $18,000/person.

How could it be possible to tax the billionaires anything close to that!?

The graphic makes no sense. The percentages get worse as income levels decrease!

This is all designed to get the deal done and then when costs escalate and they need more money, they’ll just fight over taxing more people. Healthcare for all will be a gigantic political football….

The other issue no one talks about is our medical makeup in this country. As a “melting pot” we have some wierd medical issues. Costs to address those issues are a big unknown. Other countries have more pure bloodlines and can easier estimate cost because their diseases are better known. Once you start mixing various races , the biology changes. The medical issues change. We have no idea what we’re getting into medically.

But we have issues that need to be dealt with. The current system isn’t great.

Republicans had better get things together or the democrats are going to sell this like cheese to a rat. Easy

100% of Democrats are idiots.

The US is the only developed nation in the world without universal healthcare. The US spends more on healthcare than any of the nations that have universal healthcare.

quote:

---

Single payer will never work in this country.

---

Unless advances in technology sharply lower the cost, or the prevalence of disease, high quality govt subsidized healthcare for everyone is not feasible in the long term, anywhere. It can work for a while if you have a two tier system with quality of care gradually degrading for the masses and place restrictions on care for the elderly. Even then it will eventually break the budget. Too labor intensive and uses too much expensive technology. And more importantly, when govt provides a service for free, demand will always rise until there are shortages.

quote:

---

Do we have an estimate on how much that would cost per year?

---

Essentially the entire cost of healthcare done on every single individual citizen of the US. Extra costs for illegals and that's a little bit more difficult to calculate. That estimate is only accurate assuming no hospitals and doctors' offices close because they can't make on Medicare rates.

ETA (Grok) As of the latest available data (mid-2026), the total U.S. national health expenditure (NHE)—the broadest measure of healthcare spending for the entire population—was approximately $5.3 trillion in 2024 and rose to about $5.7 trillion in 2025.
This figure covers all citizens and residents (not just citizens), including spending by governments (federal, state, local), private insurers, businesses, households (out-of-pocket), and other sources. It encompasses hospital care, physician/clinical services, prescription drugs, nursing homes, home health, public health, administration, research, and more.