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A point which I didn't think of: we are already paying for everyone's healthcare. Doctors and hospitals can't turn anyone away and they aren't losing money. So it's really an accounting problem how do we collect the money which people and businesses are already paying and how to distribute which Medicare already does sufficiently well.

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That's not quite correct. Hospitals can't turn away patients with life-threatening conditions until they are stable. In practice that means everyone gets triaged. A better system would run public clinics, staffed by PAs and nurse practitioners (with possibly a physician) near the ER, and force the people who have had a cough for two weeks to go to the clinic first. Work everyone near the top of their training, and give hospitals safe harbor for sending non-emergency patients to the clinic first.

That's just one sensible (I think) proposal. We don't need to refinance the current system, we need to completely reengineer it.

This comment reminds of some of the hospitals in India where up-skilling is becoming commonplace to remain efficient and cost-effective. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-26/the-world...

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