Pooling healthcare revenue...

[Heartstrings]

Have always thought if we pooled the revenue from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security Disability, Veterans Adm etc., we would have enough $$ for single payer, universal healthcare for all...

Booyah!

[SickOfTheOnePct]

1. Nice thought

but highly unlikely that it would be enough.

[Horse with no Name]

2. Those are all government sponsored programs

let's try dismantling the insurance companies whose CEO's make in excess of $17 million each and pooling that money along with premiums--and allow those members to have Medicare.

[Heartstrings]

3. Well that's primarily what single payer would theoretically do...

[Hoyt]

4. If you pooled all those, you'd have enough to cover current beneficiaries of those programs unless

some big changes are made in other components of the health system. In other words, I don't think you'd save much in admin to cover new very many new people. You would still have to increase taxes, charge people premiums or something. Consolidation is not a bad thing and allows for things like negotiating for lower drug prices. I'm just saying there wouldn't be much left over to add new people to the single payer system solely by pooling those programs.

[taught_me_patience]

5. Not even close to enough

We'd probably have to do all that plus a 10% payroll tax to pay for universal healthcare.