Can the United States provide health care for all?
Of course. After all, providing universal coverage, at, say, an average cost of $5,000 per person, will cost at most $250 billion annually and likely less because some of the uninsured can afford to pay part of the cost of their health insurance—a quarter earn more than $40,000- and many are lower-cost young people. Two hundred and fifty billion dollars is a large sum, for sure, but not overwhelming relative to the trillions of expenditures in the stimulus bills. And United States citizens support universal coverage. Buffeted by a recessionary economy and locked into jobs they do not want only because they offer health insurance, Americans increasingly demand affordable access to health care. So we’ve got the demand. We have an adequate supply of doctors, nurses, and facilities (though perhaps not forever if we continue on our current course). And we can afford a well-structured universal plan. To achieve such a plan, however, we need to impose the discipline of the marketplace so that
