A conservative think-tank put the cost of Medicare for All at $36T, which Bernie was like HEY $2 trillion less!

Fact is, guesses as to the cost are all over the board. Anywhere from $32T to $40T over 10 years. Can we bring down prescription costs by $50B a year or $15B a year? Can we save $300B on admin, or $500B? Will people go to the dr more often? Or will earlier diagnoses reduce costs? More dr, but less ER?

Let's go $3.5T a year.

Make believe edition how to pay for it: How would Bernie pay for that? Well, he starts by pointing out $2T is already being paid by government, so only deals with like $1.2T a year ish.

7.5% payroll tax paid by employer (after first $2 million in payroll, to protect small business). $400B a year. 4% income tax on employees, after standard $29K deduction. $350B a year.

Then he points out that corporate and personal income taxes would go up because corporations have higher taxable profits and people have higher taxable income because they are not spending on deductible private health insurance. He says this is $420B a year. I'd REALLY, REALLY like to see his creative accounting on this one! If private healthcare spending is some $1.2T a year, and we're wiping that out... well... really, replacing it with the above $750B.... I don't see how converting $1.2T in partially deductible private healthcare spending into $750B in healthcare taxes, reduces deductions and credits enough to bring in an extra $420B a year income tax receipts.

Yeah Mr, Sanders... I'm not so sure about your plan, especially since it still has complications like states spending Medicaid matching funds even though Medicaid goes away, and has the separate 2.9% Medicare tax, and has a trillion already coming from general funds and... what a hodge-podge mess of revenue.

Reality edition: How about we be clean and honest?

There is some $7 trillion in personal income subject to Social Security tax, another $350B or so above the cap. Call it $7.4T. To raise $3.5T a year, all we would need is 47% of that income, call it 23.7% paid by employer and 23.7% by employee.

Before you freak, businesses that pay for healthcare are already averaging some $12K per, with median wage of $40K that is above the 23.7%. When premiums, deductibles and co-pays are considered, median employees are already paying as well.

What we're actually doing is shifting the cost from below median income households to above median income households, which already happens when people without insurance show up at the ER. With a $12 minimum wage and a full time job, a single income household would pay $6K. A household earning $200K would pay $47K (so, this plan would increase my costs some $25K a year maybe (47k - 12K current premium, deductibles, co-pays -10k state and income tax savings from eliminating current healthcare spending?) ... but I'm still in favor of it, because life is not only about me.)

Then, add social security tax and round it to 30%.

BUT, remember, we're eliminating $2 trillion in existing government spending and $1.2T private healthcare spending, with is already set to climb to $2.5T and $1.3T, so while that 30% seems insanely high, the current system is EVEN HIGHER!

Note that we're talking $3.5T healthcare spending, $1T SS. Add another $500B-$1T for other social spending. We could be at $6T to $6.5T on social spending vs $1T non-social. That is up to 86% of the federal budget being social spending. I'm okay with that.