Why is the level of conversation on this topic so low?<p>There's two top level comments here that effectively say: "Healthcare costs money! You didn't think of that did you, commie!".<p>And this is on a forum full of intelligent techies who are interested in business. I shudder to think what the opinion of the average Republican voter is. Some fever dream involving death panels no doubt.
This won't pass the house, the Property class won't let it. (Their two departments are the Democrats and Republicans.)<p>If it were possible, in a hypothetical sense:<p>Raise corporate taxes, they're much too low to be sustainable.<p>Care would need to be more efficient than Cuba or UK NHS in order to be cost-effective, this means preventative medicine and QALY will be front-and-center. The question will be how to pay for major operations and expensive, ongoing conditions without ending-up with Greece-style finances and IMF bailout austerity conditions. Even with cutting costs to rest of the world prices (1/4 of current prices), it would still be hundreds of billions per year. It's not impossible, but it would be an up-hill climb all the way and might not be very good with compromises, loopholes and back-room deals that will likely infest it.<p>Maybe there's enough rich corporations and wealthy people with taxes to raid, but their lobbyists on both sides of the aisle won't allow anything more than crumbs and getting back to sucking the blood money out of poor people.
<i>The bill does not include detailed language about how the state would come up with hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for health care coverage for nearly 40 million residents.</i><p>Perhaps they expect to go bankrupt and let the rest of the country bail them out?