Nov
25
What’s the total cost to all US governments of health care, including coverage for employees and tax breaks ?
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Question: I’d like to know the total bill, what’s being spent by every level of government in the country, including the revenue lost to deductions taken by both businesses and individuals. Medicare, Medicade, Veterans, Military,any other government programs, health coverage for government employees at all levels, the tax breaks at all levels – the works. I expected to find this number fairly easily; how can we talk about the proper role of government in health care if we don’t know how much is already being paid for with tax dollars ? But I can’t find it.
2 Comments
November 25th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
The federal government spends about 520 billion dollars per year on health care.
Thats medicare, medicaid and veterans health care.
Total state health care spending is around 300 billion.
November 25th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
One reason you can’t find the answer is that the government doesn’t keep track of the cost of what budget wonks call “tax expenditures” or the revenue lost to different policies like health care related deductions and tax breaks.
Lots of budget and policy wonks think this is a problem. Partly because it is a way of spending money without spending money. Changes in the tax code don’t get the same scrutiny that spending programs do. Also, tax expenditures are rarely evaluate for effectiveness.
Also it is unpopular to equate programs like health insurance for government employees with programs like Medicaid. One is a fairly standard employee benefit and one is a welfare program. The programs don’t really function the same way at all.