Funding Medicare for All

 Now that I got basic income out of the way again, I'm going to take another crack at funding medicare for all. I think I can do it in a way that works this time. If not, well, there's always medicare extra for all.

This plan is going to take a bit from multiple M4A plans I previously looked at. I don't know exactly how much M4A will cost, but I'm going to aim for the $1.75-2 trillion mark with funding, based on the Sanders and Warren plans. Without further ado, let's get to it.

7.5% employer side payroll tax- $520 billion per year

This plan is lifted right from Bernie's medicare for all plan, which will make up the bulk of this proposal. This payroll tax does not count against the laffer curve for taxation of the rich, because it is an employer side tax. Workers never see this tax and it does not factor into their calculations. However, it could theoretically influence hiring habits. Still, given how much a disincentive employer based health insurance seems to be for many industries, it seems like this is an improvement.

4% tax on income - $547 billion per year

This is similar to Bernie's 4% tax on households. However, given UBI exists in my ideal world, and this plan is intended to complement my basic income plan, we won't need to exempt income. Basic income is the exempt income. If we apply a 4% tax to all income sources minus social security as per my basic income plan, we would have a tax base of $13.684 trillion. At 4%, this could be expected to bring in $547 billion per year.

Corporate tax rate increase - $240 billion per year

Both Sanders and Warren expected to raise the corporate tax rate and raise around $290-300 billion depending on the plan. Biden's plan can be expected to raise the corporate tax rate by around $52 billion a year over the next 10 years, so I'm going to assume that by implementing far more full throated changes, we could bring in probably roughly $240 billion in revenue. 

Wealth tax - $275 billion per year

Elizabeth Warren estimates being able to bring in $275 billion a year from a wealth tax. I'm going to stick with this plan and use it to fund healthcare. 

Repealing tax exemptions for health insurance - $140 billion per year

Elizabeth Warren believes that $140 billion could be raised from tax exemptions being repealed that currently go to people paying for health insurance. Since they no longer need to do this, that income can be taxed normally.

Elimination of the Overseas Contingency Operations Fund - $80 billion per year

This is a Warren led initiative to eliminate a specific fund related to defense spending that is targetted toward operations in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. You know, the kinds of places we should no longer be wasting resources or manpower occupying because it's time to end the War on Terror already.

For the 99.8% Act - $34 billion per year

Bernie Sanders wants to crack down on the estate tax, making it far stricter.

Excise taxes - $33 billion per year

I would implement the suggested excise taxes implemented in the Medicare for America Act, which, given the current revenue raised, I estimate would likely raise around $33 billion per year. 

To break down my logic:

Tobacco- Currently we bring in $12.5 billion per year from excise taxes on tobacco. I estimate that the Medicare for America changes would double it, giving us an additional $12.5 billion in revenue.

Alcohol- Currently we bring in $10 billion per year and Medicare for America would radically change the tax rates. Some stuff would not go up much, but some things would be increased by a favor of 16. I'm not sure how to weigh this stuff so I would just estimate bringing in another $10 billion this way.

Sugary drinks- It's unclear how much revenue we would bring in from the tax on sugary drinks, but in line with alcohol and tobacco, I would guess $10 billion or so. I'll just go with that for now. 

Total revenue - $1.869 trillion per year

This is smack dab in the middle of my projections, and if we need more money, there are other places we can tap. For example, Warren believes we could raise $230 billion from improving tax enforcement (which we should be doing anyway), which would push us over the $2 trillion mark. She also believes we could bring in $40 billion from immigration reform, for example.

I also have not touched capital gains either here or with my basic income plan. This is largely because I suspect my UBI plan will be taxing those sources of income at a higher rate and given the relatively low laffer curve peaks on capital gains I don't want to be too greedy. 

But yeah. The numbers work in theory, and I'm sure whatever errors are made, either here, with my basic income plan, can be corrected easily. I have room, and these plans are a lot easier to implement in practice than their raw dollar amounts suggest they would be. Most plans other than this that I would like to implement are relatively small, and I saved funding mechanisms explicitly for that. I'm also not even going to bother with infrastructure, housing, or childcare/preK, as I'm happy with the Biden plans on those. However, given Biden is lacking sorely on education, I likely would want to focus on that too. 

As for education, since it doesn't deserve its own article, I largely just support Bernie's plan, which is funded primarily from a tax on wall street, which is why I did not use such a tax on this or basic income.