> The United States will never have universal healthcare because a subset of the population would rather pay more for worse health outcomes than participate in

> The United States will never have universal healthcare because a subset of the population would rather pay more for worse health outcomes than participate in a system the provides abortions, HRT, or PreP, or any healthcare at all to Black people. This subset does exist, but is smaller than the percentage of people who think the system is broken - and the solution is not to just open up the floodgates and make it even more broken and even more expensive. You FIRST have to fix the system before you open up the floodgates. I am on your side that I think it would actually cost LESS to move all high-cost patients off of the ER and onto Medicaid. But that's not a big enough problem to actually move the needle. In the rosiest scenario, you might save 2% per year. That's still like $20-40B, so nothing to scoff at - but in realistic scenarios, I'm doubtful it would save >$10B. Even if they had Medicaid, they're so conditioned on going to the ER for everything, a lot of them might still go there instead of somewhere cheaper. For one, they might be convinced they get better care there (and maybe they would). There's way bigger fish to fry.