Step 1- Implement a payroll tax roughly equal to what is already being paid by employers and employees on premiums.
I am with you all the way, — — -on everything beyond this first step. This is too important to screw up, so please do your research on how our government actually funds spending. Hint: It isn’t with taxes and borrowing. Getting this backward from a knee jerk assumption the government must “get” money to spend will also reverse the apparent course of action needed and doom the program, and perhaps the economy.
The monopoly issuer of the nation’s currency never needs to obtain its own currency to fund spending. In fact, it must spend into the economy before a dime of tax can be collected or a single bond sold. The government doesn’t need our money, we need its spending in deficit to fund the economy. If one gets this thinking correct it becomes obvious that we may have to “cut” taxes to allow the private sector to absorb the many workers made unemployed in the insurance industry and administrative employees now in the health care industry when their jobs are eliminated.
Many economists don’t believe that even a significant tax cut would be sufficient to employ enough workers quickly enough to prevent a recession from Medicare4All implementation and suggest the government create a federally funded job guarantee to offer public service jobs to any who need one and to act as a countercyclical backstop to the economy. Such a program would also establish a floor for private employment wages and benefits and level out the business cycle for workers.
Attempting to “pay for” major programs for a sovereign currency-issuing government is futile and will lead to problems. As long as the real resources needed to obtain the program’s goals exist, or potentially exist, in the private sector creating money will not cause inflation. However, should inflation arise “then” is the time to consider taxation to remove demand from the economy, not pre-spending as one would in managing a household budget. Of course, one also has to consider the inflationary effect of money previously needed to pay for insurance and out of pocket costs being suddenly available to consumers, but that is entirely different from “paying for” the program with taxation.
