Its going to be one or the other: do without a universal health care program or have huge tax increases if we go that way.
I've read a couple of reports (I forget the links, although they didn't seem to be overtly partisan one way or the other) that suggested that universal healthcare wouldn't cost as much as people might expect. When people are already paying north of $1000/month in premiums and still on the hook for a $5000 deductible per person, that means that even a couple in poor health are potentially out of pocket to the tune of $22,000pa just in healthcare expenses. It doesn't seem like a huge leap of faith to figure that a centrally funded system
could be achieved much more cheaply than the existing system. Of course whether the same governments that provide the VA and the DMV could actually achieve something that didn't cost twice as much for a service half as good is another matter.
One thing that is striking about the US system is just how much some drugs can cost. Some years ago I was in the US and needed some medication, which was prescription only and even then would cost $150. It wasn't urgent, so I waited until I was back in England and bought it over the counter at the pharmacy for less than $10.
A major downside with something that is publicly funded is that it ends up being used as a political football whichever party is in power, and anything funded by the government typically ends up riddled with inefficiency and waste if not outright corruption. And then you get some of the increasing silliness like we saw with the NHS in England, where the government is quite happy taking billions in taxes from smokers but then turn around and try to deny treatment for smoking-related issues on the NHS. A few years back they came up with the grand idea of denying treatment to overweight people, although strangely didn't offer any tax reduction to offset the loss of service provision. And it comes with similar issues related to rationing, where in some areas you can get cosmetic surgery on the NHS, in some areas you can get IVF, and in other areas you struggle to get certain cancer treatments.
It's great to know that if you are involved in something nasty you won't get an even nastier bill for medical treatment, it's great to know that if you are rushed to hospital following a heart attack or something you don't have anyone playing "guess what my insurance will cover" when you're not in any condition to do your research, but it's not great to know that the system increasingly focuses on hoping things will go away by themselves.
