A friend notes in an e-mail:
Wow. Where to start?
That the downpayment of $600 billion is now $1 trillion and that is actually (with Medicaid) $1.6 trillion and we still don’t cover everyone?
Or that we spend $1 trillion to only cover 16 million more?
Or that age 27 is still just a kid? (okay, that is plausible… but not with the IRS)
Or that a family with an income in the highest federal pay grade, a GS 15 , or a federal administrative law judge is poor enough to require a subsidy here.
Or maybe it is the wonderful way it controls costs. You might want to check my math on this but here is how I see it.
Some 15 million Americans covered today by their employer would be covered by the government in 2019.
At @$6,000 per enrollee, that works out to roughly $90 billion in spending in 2019,
By moving those 15 million out of private insurance, the government “picks up” $48 billion in revenues from no longer having employer provided benefits tax freed.
So here is how Uncle Sam save money in health care, we spend $90 billion to get tax savings of $48 billion and not cover a single person more. For $42 billion a year, we shift 15 million individual out of private coverage onto government coverage….
This is exactly the way the federal government saves money with Amtrak, GM, student loans, ag loans, crop insurance….