A study from the University of California, Los Angeles challenges the notion that most of the nation's healthcare system is privately funded.
CMS estimates federal and state taxpayer funds for Medicaid, Medicare and CHIP covered 45 percent of total U.S. healthcare expenditures in 2015, according to a press release from the school. However, an analysis from its Center for Health Policy Research suggests this could be a lowball estimate.
The authors found if they factored in county public health expenditures, Affordable Care Act subsidies and other sources of public spending, public funds account for about 71 percent of healthcare expenditures — at least in the state of California. This means public funds will pay for a projected $260.9 billion of healthcare expenditures in California in 2016.
"For a majority of Californians, a public-run system is already the reality," Andrea Sorensen, co-author and graduate student at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said in the press release. "A single-payer system could unite all these various programs and expand them to the entire population, resulting in a more streamlined and cost-effective approach to healthcare spending."
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