Medicare

A brief overview:

The program now covers 45 million Americans aged 65 or older, as well as younger people with permanent disabilities, among them patients afflicted with End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD). About half of Medicare beneficiaries live at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line (i.e., $20,800 annual income for a single person and $28,000 for a couple). Over a third of the beneficiaries are afflicted with three or more chronic conditions.

In 2009, Medicare is expected to cost the federal government about $480 billion. That represents over a fifth of total national health spending on personal health care, 13 percent of the federal budget and close to 3.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. These outlays are financed with a combination of payroll taxes (41 percent), general tax revenues (39 percent), premiums paid by the elderly (12 percent) and sundry other sources, including interest earned on a trust fund established for the program.

So Medicare is a program that covers 45 million people and costs around $480 billion of taxpayer money. This is why I have to laugh when people speak about government-funded health care in theoretical terms -- it already exists! The only question is whether we want more of it.

Update: To put that $480 billion in perspective, it is roughly equal to the combined GDP of Sweden and Denmark. You could buy a $1300 MacBook for every person in the U.S. and still have $90 billion left over.