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Someone (sorry can't remember who) asked what my payroll tax would be for single payer. Here are quick numbers (thread)
Using 2018 as a base, total spending is $3.6 trillion, assume 8 percent increase with more access to uninsured and under-insured. That adds $300 billion.
The amount coming from private insurance is a bit over $1.2 trillion. I would also look to get out of pocket down to 1 percent of GDP ($200b). That gives us $180b, plus the $300b of additional usage gets us $1.68 tr to make up.
I'd get $290b from free market drugs. We would replace patent monopoly funding with direct public funding. Direct spending goes from around $440b to $80b. Plus we need about $70b in additional public spending.
I'd save another $100b with the same story with medical equipment. (Savings of course are not immediate, takes time for research to yield results.)
Having drugs and medical equipment at free market (generic) prices would also eliminate a huge source of fraud in the current system.
I'd get another $100 billion from removing import barriers to qualified foreign doctors, bringing the pay of our doctors and dentists closer to that of their counterparts in Canada and West Europe.
And, we can save at least $150 billion on waste from private insurance and also the costs imposed on hospitals, doctors' offices and other providers.
That leaves you a bit more than $1 trillion to make up, which would correspond to a payroll tax of 11 percent. We can knock this down some with more taxes on the rich, but that seems a reasonable starting point.
