> It would more or less make every doctor, nurse, and technician an employee of the US government. Medicare paid out $583bn[0] in benefits in 2013. Total annua

> It would more or less make every doctor, nurse, and technician an employee of the US government. Medicare paid out $583bn[0] in benefits in 2013. Total annual healthcare spending in the US $3.8tn[1]. Does that mean each healthcare professional is 15% employed by the government? Not in the least. Northrop Grumman has ~25bn in revenue as of 2012. A majority of its revenue comes from government spending. Does that mean Northrop Grumman employees are employed by the government? You spend $12 on a movie ticket. Is the projectionist employed by you? The box office personnel? The on-set supplier of craft services? > it would remove broad market price discovery from allocation of medical services. Like we have broad market price discovery now? For perfect price discovery, the purchaser of a product must have access to the same information as the provider of a product. Given the average citizen, can they make an informed decision about what the cost of an appendectomy should be? The outrage over the $82,000 hepatitis c cure informs us that no, they don't. And even if they did: is the average healthcare consumer going to refuse to purchase a life-saving drug or procedure because it's too expensive? The purchaser in this situation _has no bargaining power_. They cannot determine whether or not to purchase a life-saving service due to cost! It's buy it or _perish_. For-profit healthcare is a hostage situation. In a hostage situation, market forces are moot. 0. http://kff.org/medicare/fact-sheet/medicare-spending-and-financing-fact-sheet/ http://kff.org/medicare/fact-sheet/medicare-spending-and-fin... 1. http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2014/02/02/annual-u-s-healthcare-spending-hits-3-8-trillion/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2014/02/02/annual-u-s-h...