$3T<$5T

Only if you reduce health care expenditures by $2 trillion, down to 60% of current levels. But that's what I was talking about in terms of path dependency. The amount of economic damage you would inflict on virtually everyone who is employed in the health care industry would be massive. There are far too many people who have structured their lives assuming that providing health care services would pay $X for you to be able to come in and decree that they will now be paid only 60% of $X.

You can put the pain on the taxpayers, or you can put the pain on every doctor and nurse and lab tech and orderly and clinician and medical administrative aide and....well you get the point. TANSTAAFL.

Vermont didn't want any of its voters to pay more money for worse insurance, and it couldn't make all their medical providers cut their price of services nearly in half. So it couldn't make the money work.

The same is true of the country at large. Not because of JC's. But because something like 12% of all U.S. workers are in the health care sector.