First and foremost this would be a HUGE boon for small businesses. They are currently hugely outclassed in offering benefits which hampers hiring. It's also significantly more costly per employee for them.

Second, huge boon for employees who can change jobs left and right regardless of life circumstances. Currently the best way to improve your wages and/or get promoted to a bigger position is to get a job at a new company.

Third, huge boon for entrepreneurs who can now take bigger risks to start a new business because regardless of what happens, they don't have to worry about losing their healthcare

All of these things will have long term knock-on effects of leveling the opportunities for non wealthy people as well.

I'll say it for the millionth time. Every single stance the GOP takes is bad for small businesses, bad for the economy, bad for the country.

I'd probably go to the doctor.

A better life for 99.999999% of the country.

The other 0.0000001% are already so wealthy that their life will be exactly the same except that they will be furious about the 99.999999% having an easier life.

Global warming would probably be solved, because hell would also have frozen over.

everyone would be in better shape health-wise.

but also billionaires would lose money, which is why it'll never happen as things are now

More entrepreneurship. Plenty more people would work for themselves or start businesses if they didn't have to worry about healthcare.

If healthcare were decoupled from employment, Americans could protest in much larger number and for a longer period of time.

A general strike would become viable.

People would have more job mobility. You could quit (or get fired) and not have to worry about becoming bankrupt due to healthcare.

People that don't have insurance will be able to seek aid. Less people will die of preventable illness. People can focus on getting better without the stress of "how will I pay for this? I'm ruined"

US would start catching up to the technologically advanced nations in life expectency. A lot more people would start businesses or take a chance on dream jobs. The us would become more competitive with other countries as businesses would no longer have it as a cost. Its essentially like subsidizing your whole economy and many of our competitors do just that so we have to compete with that.

Several people I know would retire from management level positions. It would energize upward advancement in a number of institutions.

my friend would get the blood pressure meds he needs instead of searching for magic pills at the health food store.

About half the US would declare civil war because they are so fucking stupid?

The economy would skyrocket. Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE would benefit. And there are people in this country so vile they would lose out on billions or trillions in profits just to screw over the masses. Imagine companies not having to pay 10-20k+ per employee for healthcare. Employees getting preventative care, being healthy, and being more .. PRODUCTIVE!

Hope would exist again and every american could get back to pursuing happiness rather than lock in on survival mode only.

Many companies would lose profit. Many greedy fucks would not be able to afford their third yaht and fifth house.

FWIW universal healthcare is not single payer. Its nationalizing healthcare providers and doing away with health insurance entirely. Which is better than any single payer plan IMO. Hospitals have never really been successful profit generating ventures.

The entire health insurance industry would be deleted along with all the jobs and stock value it produced. And yeah fuck'em but there's going to be knock on economic effects from deleting an entire industry.

Things happening to you medically would stop defining your life. I called for a check on something, get a date in 2 days and be scheduled for a radiology, all 100% free.

We all saw the Regressives cut Medicaid without caring that it meant millions of citizens losing their health insurance. With universal coverage we’d see similar but on a bigger scale. Regressives will always play up spite and self-righteousness , will always find a scapegoat who is “cheating”, will always play up high taxes being “bad for business”, plus of course we’d all like to pay less in taxes. We would still need the “face eating leopard” meme. Even then, it would be better for the rest of us, but it would still be the same fight

Lots of people would exit the traditional job market, millions would start small private business. Pay would go up both because of the healthcare savings to companies and because people would stop working shit jobs for shit pay just to keep health insurance.

It might also lead to a massive recession as for profit healthcare providers and services last l lay off workers and go bankrupt.

So mixed bag probably good overall for workers, very bad for capitalists. But there would be a massive labor disruption and lots of people would be on the losing side initially.

I would support a transitional system where every say 5 years we lower the age for Medicare access so we gradually ween off the old system and the healthiest most profitable pool stays in the old system the longest.

It still screws over the next generation which I don't love or think it's fair but the ACA created a system so entrenched I don't think there is a way to roll it back without causing pain.

According to magats the gates of hell will open and demons will spew forth.

Realistically there would be fox news blasting propaganda on how much the country is going into debt to fund the madness. "People are going to the doctor for everything now! Back in my days when we fell with our bike we put a plaster on it, we didn't burden the healthcare system with a few scrapes. Our mom gave a kiss on it and we'd be okay. A kid on our block Jimmy broke gis arm once and his mom did surgery on the kitchen table. But now? What do you think putting a plaster on by a doctor costs? 500 dollars. Yes, that's right. It's madness, Trump would have never stood for this, God bless his soul. We had it good under him. Now look. Wars, famine, heat waves, our economy is in shambles! And why? People don't live like they do no more, sad. Do you wish we could go back sometimes? I do. I sit on my front porch and I wonder... what would life be if our great leader would still be here with us. I think we need to all channel our inner Trump tonight. We need it. America needs it. You need it."

realistically that's what's going to happen on fox

Approximately 1-2 million people employed in the mass bureacracy of claims processing and validation would lose their jobs.

That's how much of a gargantuan amount of bullshit the healthcare industry is, its so big that at this point, assuming the rest of the economy was doing fine, switching to universal health care would create a moderate recession, because so many bullshit jobs would no longer need to exist.

Obviously it would be a massive net economic benefit, but at this point, medicine is gonna sting a bit.

Maybe I could get the therapy and medicine I need.

Instead of making people contractors to avoid paying benefits companies would make people employees to have more control over them.

If we're handwaving the whole transition, nothing too dramatic. It would be more like Canada. People would be healthier and not stressed about the costs of seeing a doctor.

I don't think the positive differences would be as dramatic as some here are proposing.

It would immeditately benefit a lot of people with existing large medical bills or chronic health conditions. But this probably wouldn't be an immeditately noticeable economic boon - instead, it would take the form of these people unburying themselves from debt and building up savings.

Over the long term, I would expect more small businesses, more people starting families, and more people choosing to retire earlier. But I think it would probably take a decade or more for this change to really be felt by those not directly impacted.

In the short term, there would be a massive economic restructuring as the entire health insurance industry collapsed overnight. Literally millions of people would be out of work. In the long term, this would be a good thing - but short term, it would be a very big problem.

Insurance companies would find some way to have record profits. No one spends money more frivolously than the US federal government. Most likely the government would make deals with preexisting medical care providers instead of building out their own national healthcare.

I would like to point out that the two need not be connected. We could unmarry healthcare and jobs by making it a law that you could cash out your healthcare coverage. This would open the market for more competitive nealthcare administrators as the people using the insurance would be the ones choosing. I think it would also increase the popularity of paying direct for the simpler stuff and only carrying insurance for the big stuff. This I think is an important step as it would realign what medical care actually costs when you take out all the middlemen taking their cut. And then, when you do move to universal healthcare, the prices would be more accurate. Otherwise we are going to end up with nationalize anthem or united healthcare for determining what medical care you get, which will be a nightmare.

Curling the monkey paw a little bit...

A single payer system will likely try to look for some efficiencies since they can track everyone. One thing I expect will happen is that care will shift regarding the homeless population.

A small minority of homeless often rely on hospitals as a shelter of last resort in cases of severe weather. There are also cases where homeless only interface with the emergency care system since it is the only care they can get.

I can easily see a government run system pushing these people into "more cost effective" options, including the immediate movement from emergency rooms into "specialty facilities" for "long term care".

Honestly, a ton of people in the health insurance industry would become unemployed. As well as a lot of hospital/clinic administrators.

A lot of stocks that are held by pensions and mutual funds would become worthless causing chaos in the stock market and destroying peoples retirements.

While I entirely agree with all the benefits posted under here, we’d also be subject to the tyranny of regressives. That face eating leopard would feast on those red state seniors focussed on cutting health insurance to “those” people.

Take education as an analogy. That’s mostly run by individual states, and there is a huge range of outcomes. Massachusetts is typically rated as or near the best education system but we pay for it. We recognize it as something valuable and as a good investment. Meanwhile many states/locales seem to see education as only a cost to be minimized. This is one of the reasons I live where I do. But if it were national, we’d lose that choice. One downside of universal healthcare would be that we’d no longer have the choice of investing in something better

I work in tech and have better health insurance than most. I want the same for everyone, not less for everyone, even when that comes with voting for higher taxes