Reply #280: Which numbers?

[Recursion]

2.6 trillion a year in payments to health providers (just for the inadequate medical care we provide today) is from Kaiser
US population of 307 million is from the US census
700 billion a year on Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA is from the trustees' reports (actually the Medicaid bit was from Kaiser too)
A per-person per-year cost of $6188 comes from subtraction and then division (1.9 trillion / 307 million)
A per-person per-month cost of $515 also comes from division (6188 / 12; the 12 months in the year comes from Pope Gregory the Great, I think)

That's just to pay for the inadequate care we currently provide. We want to provide more care (both more care to the people with insurance and care in the first place to people without it). So we want providers to work more (either more doctors and nurses, or the current doctors and nurses doing more work, or some combination), and unless we want the premiums for our national health system to be $515 per person per month, we want this for less money than we're paying now. I want somebody to tell me what providers are going to make less money than they are now, for doing more work. (Like I said, drug companies are probably a place to start, though I don't think we can solve the problem just there.)