Also, when you are dealing with a tax base of 1500 people, how much of a non-noticable tax increase would actually effectively fund a full time EMS service?
This is a point that is often missed in the discussion when considering US systems (and is also relevant in some parts of Canada). If EMS is a municipally funded entity, there's a great disparity in how much resources different communities have to direct towards it.
In many other countries EMS is a federally funded public service. This changes the variables a lot.
Actually, the majority of people around here don't have health insurance. Your 2.75% tax increase would almost double our current sales tax rate of 7%, taking sales taxes as an example.
Well, technically that would be increasing it by less than 50%. However, this whole discussion is making a bunch of assumptions.
US healthcare is (I think) the most expensive per capita in the world, and about the only system in an industrialised country that doesn't universally insure. If (and this one big, if, because there's a lot of vested interests opposing this), it was restructured towards a European system, it might cost a lot lot less.
If the Australians pay a 2.5% sales tax towards healthcare (I think this might actual be a payroll/income tax, perhaps someone can clarify), I'm sure the cost of insuring the currently uninsured would be less than the cost of reproducing the entire Australian healthcare system.
Also, in a global context, a 7.5% sales tax is pretty low. For example:
Canada - has provincial and federal sales tax, varies by province from 5-15%
Australia - 10%
Sweden - 25% (also the employer pays a 31% payroll tax!)
UK - 20% (a little over 10 years ago this was "only" 15%)
New Zealand - 15%
Norway 25%
South Africa - 14%
France - ~ 20%
Germany - 19%
Mexico - 16%
[Most countries have a lower rate on transportation costs, or on supermarket food items, children's clothes, etc.]
Part what's being missed in the fiscal responsibility debate in the states, is the choice not to tax is a choice not to collect revenue. Tax cuts have the same result as spending. Also, it's not like the US budget isn't actually quite large. If money was redistributed from defense spending, it might easily cover healthcare reform.
Then you don't understand how America works. People are free to make their own choices, even if you believe it is the wrong one. No amount of explaining it will change everyone's mind.
Yeah, because the US is so different from any other democratic nation on the planet? The US is intrinsically different and "more free" than Canada, the UK, New Zealand, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway etc. Those are all police states like Syria or North Korea where dissent is brutally crushed by state police?
People are just as free in many other industrialised countries, with just as many democratic rights. Freedom is not restricted to the borders of the US. Have you considered that you may not understand how it works in other countries?
As to the rest or your post, I'm not even going to bother addressing it.
I think you just did