> The thing is most of us already subsidize the healthcare industry. The hospital has to treat someone in an emergency if they take medicare or medicaid. The "

> The thing is most of us already subsidize the healthcare industry. The hospital has to treat someone in an emergency if they take medicare or medicaid. The "subsidies" run the other way. Medicare reimbursements do not cover COGS, which means that providers cannot sustain themselves solely on Medicare reimbursement rates; they need to take privately-insured patients (whom they charge dramatically more) in order to stay afloat[0]. These costs get passed on to privately-insured patients in the form of higher premiums. [0] Medicare acknowledges this, and in fact, Medicare even runs multiple stipend programs to essentially pay extra to hospitals who don't see enough privately-insured patients that they can make up the difference. If they didn't, those hospitals would close, because you can't lose money on a per-patient basis and still run a practice, even if you managed to recruit doctors, nurses, and staff who agreed to work for free as volunteers.