http://www2.census.gov/govs/apes/08fedfun.pdf – there are 2.8 Million civilian federal employees

http://www2.census.gov/govs/apes/08stlus.txt – there are 14.9 Million state and local government employees

http://www.ehow.com/about_4595933_what-size-us-military.html – there are roughly 1.5M active duty military servicemen

That’s 19.2 Million individuals (plus their families) receiving health care paid for by the federal government, above and beyond the 46% figure noted above.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14942047/

Average household size is 2.6 in the US, so it’s likely that 19.2 * 2.6 = 50 Million people get their health insurance from government employment. That’s 16% of the US population.

When added to the 46% of individuals receiving health care from direct government programs, that totals 62% of all health care in the US!

Here’s some quick analysis of your premise:

There were 45 million people on Medicare in 2008, and the total cost of Medicare in 2008 was roughly 400 Billion in 2008. That’s roughly $8900 per person, per year, or $740 per month.

At that price, Medicare is actually quite a bit more expensive than many private and employer-sponsored health insurance programs. This makes sense, because Medicare treats the oldest (and thus sickest) Americans, and because it pays for a large percentage of end-of-life care in the US, which is prohibitively expensive.

If younger Americans were allowed to join Medicare, their costs would probably be less – although it’s likely that many sick people would choose to join, keeping costs high. So I’m not sure that the plan would work. The truth is that mandatory health insurance, or a single payer system, are the only way to get everyone covered, and have everyone share in the cost. If we care about getting 100% of people covered, that is…

http://www.cms.hhs.gov/MedicareEnRpts/Downloads/HISMI08.pdf

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy09/pdf/budget/tables.pdf

Here’s the very simple solution: allow anyone to buy in to Medicare at cost.
This will start insurance companies to scream and cry about how terrible it will be for those poor people signing on to such a terrible system, but in fact people will do so willingly, and it will show the high degree of theft in the private insurance business, whose incentive is to lie, cheat and steal, because the only way to a profit is by denying by obfuscatatory methods. Screw them.

The most powerful solution and best form of free market capitalism is allow the only player big enough to break the big insurance monopoly to allow anyone to buy in, at cost. I would certainly do it.

The reason the cost is hidden is because this solution is so simple and powerful. The escalation and rationing are useless arguments against the fact that everyone will finally see for themselves the truth of these arguments, and see the incentives for private insurance is billion-dollar payouts paid for by increasingly sophisticated methods for denying claims while increasing premiums.

But I fear that even if all of us were lean and healthy, we’d still have runaway health care costs. As long as someone else (the taxpayer) is paying the bill, costs will rise. Costs will stop rising when the taxpayer puts his foot down and says no more, or when the taxpayer runs out of money – whichever comes first.