US tax money pays for 7 separate programs and all that administration.

Medicare

Medicaid

Children’s Health Insurance Program

Indian Health Service (IHS)

VA

Tricare

Then all the private insurances for federal employee

Then all the private insurances that corporations pay money to have even more administration.

So that’s what 10 times the admin staff that a public program and private option would have?

Compared with Australia: Public (tax money) 1 program: Medicare Private several options such as: Bupas, Medibank, AHM.

Germany also has both public and private.

A crazy part of talking about single payer in America is the hang up over buying out public health providers with tax payer funds.

That never happened in Australia. They simply let private healthcare exist but built new public hospitals that became teaching and training hospitals. By slowly expanding pubic healthcare, which started in Queensland, they simply provided an option for more people to access local public healthcare.

Everyone gets stuck on trying to quick fix all this overnight. If we look at Oz Medicare didn’t cover all Australians until 1984. But Queensland became the first state in Australia to introduce free universal public hospital treatment in January 1946. By building public hospitals one by one, training staff, and providing better care Queensland changed the way Australians thought about public va private care.

It costs more to have more administrative staff in America. But we refuse to train new doctors or build hospitals based on the needs of the communities they should serve. Therefore we end up with hospitals that serve shareholders, not doctors, not patients. We provide care for dollars instead of people.