The way forward is *Medicare Extra*. Neera Tanden's "Social Contract for the 21st Century"

[marie999]

25. I used Statista for Medicare 61 million and Medicaid 75 million, and the VA Healthcare 9 million.

Yes, some are probably on 2, but not 3. If a veteran is in the VA healthcare system they may also be on Medicare, but would not need Medicaid. The free clinics and hospital are partially paid for by the county and the free clinics are partially staffed by volunteers. My VA doctor retired and is now volunteering at a free clinic. I found that 12 million people are on both Medicare and Medicaid so the total would be 133 million or 40% of the population. Also, 2.2 million veterans and their families are on VA Tricare. It is hard if not impossible to find out how much single-payer would cost the government since all groups seem to use different numbers to come up with the total. Leaving out the fringe groups it seems to be between savings of $600 billion or an extra cost of $500 billion. I am not an economist but it seems that much of the savings comes from cutting out the middleman, insurance companies. I don't know what companies would do if they did not have to pay insurance companies. Since they are not altruistic, I don't know how many would increase what they pay employees. It is my personal belief that it can be done without raising taxes on the lower or middle class and not a large increase on the upper class.