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If you're going to say that German insurance costs 15% of income, you need to also say that Medicare costs 2.9% of income (counting the employer half) to make a
by harryh 7y ago
If you're going to say that German insurance costs 15% of income, you need to also say that Medicare costs 2.9% of income (counting the employer half) to make an Apples-to-Apples comparison.
There's also the 0.9% surtax on income > 200k.
- rayiner 7y agoRight, good point.
- harryh 7y agoInterestingly, this kinda works out: Medicare spending is ~20% of US HC spending. So if we wanted to expand medicare to cover all HC spending we'd need to 5x the tax. 2.9% * 5 = 14.5 or basically what the tax is in Germany. Obviously lots of caveats to that calculation, but it's a nice "in the ballpark" sanity check.
- rayiner 7y agoYeah, that’s a very interesting calculation. I’ve never thought of it that way.