We have a tax called 'national insurance ' taken from your wages, plus the employer also pays a certain percent based on your earnings, that all goes direct to the govt. some of this money goes towards the NHS, most goes towards state benefits [pensions, unemployment benefit etc.. ] The majority cost of the nhs (80%) is funded through general taxation [i.e. whatever money the govt has got from all its various sources]
The annual cost of the nhs to the govt is approx 125 billion, for a country of 66 million, a prescription for medicine costs £9, if you've got a long term condition you can get a 12 month pre paid prescription which works out cheaper. bernie sanders went over to canada recently to compare the costs of medicines like insulin, in the uk diabetics get their diabetes medicine free because basically it's a life term condition.
So on these figures, the cost in the USA for a NHS style system could theoretically be £619 billion, for the same level of coverage. Obviously if we didn't have private healthcare taking up some of the slack [some employers provide private healthcare insurance too for their employees, tends to be in higher paid jobs though] the nhs costs would be higher.
just found these figures from the office of national statistics:
- Total current healthcare expenditure in 2016 was £191.7 billion, an increase of 3.6% on spending in 2015, when £185.0 billion was spent on healthcare in the UK.
- Government-financed healthcare expenditure accounted for 79.4% of total spending, £152.2 billion.
so that is total figure 191.7 billion for 66 million people, the US population is 327 million; therefore 4.95 greater; 4.95 x 191 = 946 billion pounds. [And there is massive wastage in the NHS here, loads of management costs, hiring agency nurses etc...]
On that basis somebody is doing very well out of the US's healthcare system if the approx cost to you of a medicare system for all would be 3.2 trillion dollars, taking into account the exchange rate, 2.56 trillion pounds. That's the equivalent of 2.7 times the whole cost of health in the uk, which would probably bankrupt us too.
If I was a politician in the USA, I'd propose cutting the defence budget [all those overseas bases for one] by about 25% and siphon that into helping americans earning under say 75k dollars a year [graduated]to afford health cover. That would seem a reasonable, pragmatic thing to do if you don't want an nhs style sytem but keep what you have.
I think the left is getting sidetacked into discussing free healthcare for all illegal immigrants, when even US citizens don't have this, of course that is going to increase the overall healthcare spending dramatically, the countries of origin should be billed if someone turns up needing treatment. There has to be a financial limit or constraint to how 'virtuous' political leaders want to be spending tax money [especially beyond the needs of your own citizens, isn't focusing on helping them 'virtuous' enough for them dems?]