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Comment by donovanian | Hacker News Reader

> those who could help the most

Wouldn't complete confiscation of the wealth of billionaires finance something like Medicare for All for around 3 years?

I don't think people understand how utopian and ultimately ill-conceived their plans are.

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The total wealth of all American billionaires is $4 trillion, the same amount Bernie Sanders estimates M4A would cost on an annual basis.

So if you took all those assets, somehow found $4 trillion of buyers (lots of Chinese, Russians, and Saudis would line up, I'm sure) we'd get 1 year, not 3.

This is not a valid comparison. We still spend close to $4 trillion on healthcare in the private sector.

And almost all of it is funding by the employees, just like in Europe.

And it is about to get much worse according to the CDC in 2017. [1] IIRC there were some articles cant find them that talked about the Department of Defense tracking this as an existential threat to the future of the United States of America.

[1] - https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0718-diabetes-repor...

Universal healthcare in the USA would have a negative cost; that is, today, the US government spends more than Canada does per capita on providing healthcare to the population. And then private individuals spend as much more again. And for all that spending a huge proportion of the population has effectively zero healthcare.

So if the US could implement Canada's system wholesale not only would your health insurance costs and direct payments drop vastly but you'd also get a tax refund.

Why is Bernie's estimate so high then? ($12k per man, woman, and child)

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