The Medicare budget alone should be sufficient to cover all Americans

[thewiseguy]

So the US government did spend 450 billion dollars on Medicare in 2008. Currently an estimated 45 million Americans are covered by Medicare.

Now in Australia, they do also have a Medicare plan which does cover everyone and not just elderly. There the cost of the plan for a fiscal year is estimated to be 18 billion dollars. Australia's population is around 22 million people.

So if you do the math, the 450 billion dollars that the US government spends on Medicare should be enough to cover all Americans.

In fact the US government spends more money on health care per capita than any other country in the world and yet here we are debating the issue of access and affordable health care. Is not that just nuts?

Every other country seems to have figured out a health care plan model except for us. :(