White House: 1,115

[usregimechange]

$1,115 – that’s the average premium for employer-sponsored family coverage per month in 2009. Annually, that amounts to $13,375 – or roughly the yearly income of someone working a minimum wage job.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-care-meeting/by-the-numbers

[leftstreet]

1. How many times does that go into $40 billion? The new Boeing contract

for refuelers, was it?

I suck at math

[usregimechange]

2. Quite a few

[grahamhgreen]

3. 35,874,440

[ArcticFox]

4. Insurance for everybody for 1 year.

Wait, on edit, I realize that my calculations show almost 3 Million FAMILIES could be covered for $40 Billion dollars. That's way more than 3 Million PEOPLE, as I assumed below. So, the conclusion is that our health is NOWHERE NEAR 5% (probably nearer 2%) as important as military spending. Original post follows:

$40 Billion divided by $13,375 = 2,990,654 and change. This is just shy of the population of the United States.

So, we could all have good ("employer sponsored" type) insurance for only $40 Billion a year.

For some perspective, the Dept. of Defense BASE budget will be INCREASED by $18 Billion for fiscal year 2011 from $530 Billion to $548 Billion. The 2011 budget for supplementals for overseas operations adds $33 Billion for 2010 and $159 Billion for 2011. These amounts add to about $740 Billion.

40/740 = about 5.4%

So, WHITE HOUSE, you're telling us that our health is not even 5.4% as valuable as military spending?

[sinkingfeeling]

5. I don't think so. The population is something like 305,000,000. That's considerably larger than

2.9 million.

[ArcticFox]

8. Sorry. I guess I had a mental block or something.

[leftstreet]

10. But you're on to something. Imagine if that was NON-PROFIT coverage

factoring out the for-profit insurance industry, how far would that $ go?

hmm...

[0rganism]

6. off by a factor of 100

there are about 300,000,000 in the USA. Healthcare for everyone is a major social responsibility with significant associated costs.

Which doesn't mean you shouldn't do the calculation; just be careful with the decimal point. :)

[ArcticFox]

7. You're right.

[mikelgb]

9. Therefore we mandate that you purchase it without price controls or competition