There is literally no way that we will be able to collect enough taxes to cover Medicare as it is
currently structured. Under no tax structure in the history of the United States of America have we ever managed to collect the kinds of taxes that would allow Medicare at its'
current structure to survive the 2020s. Expanding Medicare under
any tax structure with
any rates in the manner that you are describing will only collapse the system immediately instead of in the future.
And not that far in the future, either. Those comments about the 2020s are assuming that Congress basically eventually caves on funding the ACA over Medicare.
Medicare Trustees: Medicare Will Go Broke in 2024. Unless You Discount The ACA's Double-Counting. Then It Goes Broke in 2016.
Higher deductibles will absolutely re-introduce cost sensitivity and have the effect of putting downward pressure on prices.
Problem: Higher Deductibles are "mean", and "some care should be 'free'". Telling people that they need to suck up the cost of their healthcare when the political rewards go to the folks who promise free preventative, free birth control, free for the old, free for the poor, free for the young, is going to be a losing proposition.
But if we were to put America on a high-deductible, catastrophic care
only market, that would indeed go far towards reducing the prices we pay for healthcare. It's just that (at current) the government cannot afford to do that itself.
I goofed this - the 64 figure in my head was the combined unfunded liability for our entitlements, not Medicare.
Medicare's Unfunded Liability, as of April 2012, was
$38.6 Trillion. And, (again) is currently scheduled to go broke in either three or eleven years, depending on whether or not we keep the ACA as it is currently structured.
That is precisely what I am saying - unless we are willing to basically tell old people who cannot afford care to go home and die, we aren't going to be able to expand Medicare as you envision. We aren't willing to do that (old people vote).
Yeah. Paul Ryan suggested something like that, and Mitt Romney ran on it. How'd that go over?
.