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Comment by some_random

8 hours ago

Medicare alone costs $1.21 Trillion, I find that extremely hard to believe.

> Medicare alone costs $1.21 Trillion

To cover 70.5 million seniors [1]. $17k per senior.

“Per person personal health care spending for the 65 and older population was $22,356 in 2020, over 5 times higher than spending per child ($4,217) and almost 2.5 times the spending per working-age person ($9,154)” [2].

80 million under 19 [3] at that rate comes to about $400bn. And most efficiency estimates would take at least a third off that when we eliminate redundant billing processes.

Given 6% of children lack health insurance, we could cover them for about $24bn. Less than Trump’s war in Iran has cost [4].

[1] https://data.cms.gov/summary-statistics-on-beneficiary-enrol...

[2] https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-repo...

[3] https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-repo...

[4] https://www.aecf.org/blog/uninsured-children-in-america