I've never met anyone (of either party) who thinks that stories like this are acceptable. The issue, as always, is how do we fix it? Pointing to European democracies merely shows that it can be done, it doesn't necessarily offer a blueprint for how to make it happen in a country with very different size and culture.
Bernie Sanders' "medicare for all" is the plan I've seen get the most support. If we got single payer healthcare, it would probably happen that way. It would cost $1.4 trillion per year[1], which is more than everything the government currently spends outside of entitlement programs. Adding this much spending without raising revenue would more than double the annual deficit.
"Tax the rich to pay for it," Bernie says! Okay, sounds good. His supporters will point to how the top marginal tax rate in the 1950s was 91%[2], and everything was great during that post-war boom. Here's the problem: regardless of the tax laws or rates, the US federal tax revenue has always been 15-20% of GDP[3] (we are currently at 17.3% of GDP). This figure has not changed since 1945, even as the tax law has been wildly changed many times over. That's not to say that nothing can ever change this figure -- it is different in other countries after all. But numerous attempts to change it by manipulating marginal tax rates have failed, and there's no reason to think that Bernie's tax-the-rich plan will do any better.
We are on pace to run a $1 trillion deficit this year thanks to the Republican tax cuts. Simply rescinding the cuts and putting things back they way they were in 2017 gets us about 2/3 of the way to paying the cost of Medicare for all.
It can be done, we the people need to stand up and demand it while voting in leaders who will make it happen.
In 2017, before the Republican tax cuts kick in, the treasury took in $3.3 trillion, or 17.3% of GDP. Projections are that, with tax cuts in full force in 2020, we will take in $3.6 trillion or 16.4% of GDP. You're right that annual deficits will reach $1 trillion by that point, up from $660 billion in 2017.
So let's say we want to add Bernie's $1.4 trillion Medicare-for-all to 2020's projected budget of $4.6 trillion -- we're now spending about $6 trillion total in 2020. To maintain the same annual deficit we have in 2017, we'd need tax receipts of $5.3 trillion, or 24% of the projected GDP. If we wanted to balance the budget, we'd need tax receipts of $6 trillion, or 27% of GDP. That is massively higher than the US has ever been able to get. Undoing the Republican tax cuts would barely put a dent in it.
Since raising revenue to 27% of GDP through aggressive taxation is unrealistic, let's say we could do 20% of GDP -- Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter era policies were able to reach that level. That means we need to raise $6 trillion in 2020, and we need that to be 20% of GDP. So our GDP in 2020 would have to be $30 trillion. We would need to sustain 16% annual economic growth during a period of record taxation to get there. The growth has never been that high, not even during record booms, and we would need to reach it and sustain it for three years straight.
Bottom line, if you want Medicare-for-all, you're going to have to accept much higher annual deficits than this country has ever seen -- and that's after a major tax increase on the rich.
Bernie Sanders' "medicare for all" is the plan I've seen get the most support. If we got single payer healthcare, it would probably happen that way. It would cost $1.4 trillion per year[1], which is more than everything the government currently spends outside of entitlement programs. Adding this much spending without raising revenue would more than double the annual deficit.
"Tax the rich to pay for it," Bernie says! Okay, sounds good. His supporters will point to how the top marginal tax rate in the 1950s was 91%[2], and everything was great during that post-war boom. Here's the problem: regardless of the tax laws or rates, the US federal tax revenue has always been 15-20% of GDP[3] (we are currently at 17.3% of GDP). This figure has not changed since 1945, even as the tax law has been wildly changed many times over. That's not to say that nothing can ever change this figure -- it is different in other countries after all. But numerous attempts to change it by manipulating marginal tax rates have failed, and there's no reason to think that Bernie's tax-the-rich plan will do any better.
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/12/news/economy/sanders-medicar...
[2] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser%27s_law