Follow up thoughts

Thinking back on my back-of-the-envelope calculation:

An obvious argument against what I posted below would be that the increase in taxation would be offset by business and individuals no longer having to pay an insurance company for health care. That is true, but overnight you would have essentially eliminated every health insurance corporation, and thrown all those people out of work. This is an even worse deal for those who went the HSA route, as now all the money they had been saving (and would be theirs at retirement iirc) would now be appropriated by a federal agency going forward. Now as far as I know, no major candidate of either party is currently advocating this. Instead we have a proposal to force everyone to carry health insurance. The downside of this is discussed at Pajamas Media here.