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Hypothetical: Doctors have perfected a new procedure whereby people can be reincarnated by the transfer of their consciousness and memories and neuronal maps, by God, into a cloned human body, aged 21 years old. Huzzah!
The collective advice of the AMA is that this procedure be done when people are aged 65. It costs $1,000,000.
Assumptions are that their are no new babies born any longer, so the population eligible for this procedure remains constant. There is no inflation. GDP is fixed.
Case 1: current Medicare/Medicaid recipients are eligible, but everyone else has to get the procedure done with the assistance of their private insurance company. Forgetting about funding for the private insurance companies, we have 50,000,000 on the Medicare/Medicaid rolls. At $1 million each, that's $769,230,769,230 per year or rounded to $770 billion per year. This is 20% of the federal budget, and would kick the total federal budget from 25% to 30%.
Case 2: single payer is instituted and all 300 million (hypothetical??) people are covered. That's $4.62 trillion per year. This is 123% of the federal budget, and would kick the total federal budget from 25% to 55%.
Which case should be funded publicly? Are there limits to which medical procedures to offer publicly covered healthcare recipients, for financial affordability reasons? Private healthcare insurance recipients? How do we decide the financially feasible procedures?
The collective advice of the AMA is that this procedure be done when people are aged 65. It costs $1,000,000.
Assumptions are that their are no new babies born any longer, so the population eligible for this procedure remains constant. There is no inflation. GDP is fixed.
Case 1: current Medicare/Medicaid recipients are eligible, but everyone else has to get the procedure done with the assistance of their private insurance company. Forgetting about funding for the private insurance companies, we have 50,000,000 on the Medicare/Medicaid rolls. At $1 million each, that's $769,230,769,230 per year or rounded to $770 billion per year. This is 20% of the federal budget, and would kick the total federal budget from 25% to 30%.
Case 2: single payer is instituted and all 300 million (hypothetical??) people are covered. That's $4.62 trillion per year. This is 123% of the federal budget, and would kick the total federal budget from 25% to 55%.
Which case should be funded publicly? Are there limits to which medical procedures to offer publicly covered healthcare recipients, for financial affordability reasons? Private healthcare insurance recipients? How do we decide the financially feasible procedures?