That's still a cool 70 million people.
>However it somehow(?) costs more than 4x as much as the entire NHS.
Sounds like a good argument for [properly-administered] single-payer, universal healthcare.
Yes, hence why I'm comparing it to the NHS supporting the UK (~70M pop). Also note the NHS's coverage far exceeds Medicaid.
> Sounds like a good argument for [properly-administered] single-payer, universal healthcare.
The opposite right now! The US government is SO bad at managing healthcare, that they are somehow making the NHS look great.
We need to get our bureaucracy and spending under control. Then definitely yes, government funded healthcare, we can have a system closer to Australia in efficacy.
This is a tangent to this thread but I think in practice we will probably end up with something closer to the Swiss hybrid system.
They might both cover ~70M, but the NHS population has a median age of ~41, for Medicare it's ~71. The US health system is expensive, but NHS vs Medicare cost is not really a valid comparison with such drastically different demographics.
Perhaps we should be barking up the tree of the private medical-insurance complex which is the real problem when it comes to healthcare costs.
The only real way you can reform the government purely from the confines of the system is turning over around 70% of the legislative branch, I do not see that happening in any future.
I wish I was optimistic as you. Only problem is, I highly doubt any savings realized from spending cuts will materialize in the form of better healthcare.
Regulatory capture is rampant, and then there's that whole pesky issue of growing unchecked authoritarianism that has a good chance of not aligning with the will of the people.
The building is on fire, closing your eyes or clinging to a bottle of water are both valid reactions!