Daily Kos: Profits soar as oil companies victimized again by high gas prices.

Such a great headline.

Historical National Health Expenditure Data.

What I was actually trying to put together was a comparison of the US Health Care Costs with the payroll income.  My idea is that we have $2.5T annual health care and $6.5T payroll – Health Care is 38%of payroll.

Of that $2.5T I don’t know how much is for basic health care, as opposed to advanced or elective health care. We set up a Medicare or National Health Service that covers all Americans with basic health care.  Put in a payroll tax of 20% that covers Health Care and SSA. With employers matching the payroll tax, and the taxes being dedicated to health and SSA and off the federal books, we should be able to manage the costs without involving the federal budget.  The States get out of the Medicaid business and folks can move from state to state without worrying about their coverage.

Of course the big problem is to determine what is ‘basic’ health care. Are heart transplants basic or advanced? Let a panel of medical professionals and former health insurance executives determine what we will cover with our system and go from there. The insurance companies can stay around to cover the advanced and elective medical needs.

PS – Since a 20% payroll tax will put a big drag on a lot of take-home pay packets, I would  suggest that personal income taxes only be applied on income above the median household income, ~$50K . And then only gradually progressive.

Wage and salary disbursements A576RC1 – FRED – St. Louis Fed.

Took me a while to find this. I was trying to find the total annual US payroll. I found it rather quickly a few years ago but now the payroll services are obfuscating the  search engines. Plus it appears that I was looking for payroll and should have been looking for disbursements.

But there it is, $6.54T a year.

In the course of my googlings I came across the Personal consumption expenditures for the US and they run $10.37T. Interesting discrepancy between wages and salary and spending.