Abstract
Debates over financing single-payer health care reform proposals often discuss tax increases as costs without accounting for savings from the premiums and out-of-pocket payments that those taxes would replace. This Article evaluates the most important federal tax instruments that could be used to fund a national single-payer health care reform and then models three integrated approaches for financing such a reform that vary in their progressivity. Applying this to illustrative households, we find that each approach raise the revenues necessary to fund the reform while making the vast majority of low- and middle-income households better off, because their savings from reduced premiums and out-of-pocket payments exceed their increased costs from taxes.
Recommended Citation
David Gamage and James G. Kahn,
From Premiums to Taxes: Financing Strategies for Single-Payer Health Care,
40 J.L. & Health
22
(2026)
available at https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/jlh/vol40/iss1/6