Sanders vs THUGPOWER
Sanders has laid out his Medicare For All plan. He proposes:

Under the Sanders proposal, health care would be paid for by a 2.2 percentage-point increase in the individual income tax, a new 6.2 percent health care payroll tax on employers, higher estate taxes on wealthy Americans and a “more progressive” tax code, including higher tax brackets for the wealthy.

In other words, a 9 percent increase above existing taxation.

Reprinting my own estimates in 2008:

Personal example: In the last few years before I semi-retired, say 1997-2002, my employer was deducting $300 a month for health insurance, which was about 9% of gross monthly pay. In addition, the employer deducted 6% for Medicare.

Thus I was paying 15% for mixed private-government health care. If my income had been smaller, the percent would have been larger because the $300 was constant, not a percentage. In other words, our health care tax is regressive.

In those "last few years" my income was about 50k/year, which was above median individual but about equal to median household income. So the percentages were fairly representative. After I semi-retired but before the crime of Romneycare doubled everything, I was paying $300 for individual coverage, which means the $300 "employee deduction" was probably the entire amount. The "employer contribution" was fake.

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Comparing: I was paying 9 percent above existing Medicare taxation for the mixed system. Sanders proposes 9 percent above existing Medicare taxation for a single system. Seems realistic.

The French system imposes a 13 percent overall tax on everyone, and provides a service similar to current Medicare. Basically you pay for doctor visits and elective stuff, and the system pays everything else.

The most important part of single-payer is the word SINGLE. Under the French system, doctors don't have to play criminal games with a hundred insurance companies. They bill you directly, and you're responsible for filing a claim to the government if you want to. Hospitals don't have to play criminal games with a hundred insurance companies. They bill the government directly, and that's all.

Those gangster games are the real source of criminal inefficiency in our system. It's all about two-way THUGPOWER. Hospitals start by charging 10 times what they expect to receive. If you're uninsured, you're expected to pay this 10x amount. Of course you don't pay because you're uninsured; instead the hospital places a permanent lien against your life. If you are insured, the giant insurance company has enough THUGPOWER to pull the charge down to a realistic amount. There's no proper economics anywhere in the system, no supply and demand, no ordinary profit-vs-overhead. Just bullying by giant armies.
  ¶ 2:07 AM