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sscovil / medical-corps

A BILL To establish a Medical Corps in the Department of Health and Human Services.
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Can the goals of this legislation be achieved by a 501(c)(3)? #2

Open sscovil opened 7 years ago

sscovil commented 7 years ago

Facebook user Alex Bromberg posed this question on July 23rd:

Why can't you just make this happen as a 501(c)(3)? You could start tomorrow and wouldn't need to add government bureaucracy to the mix.

sscovil commented 7 years ago

In 2015, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) had an annual budget of $65 billion[1]. In that same year, the sum total of all charitable giving in the category of health was $29.81 billion; and in the category of human services was $45.21 billion[2]. The VHA serves more than 9 million enrolled Veterans each year[3]. We've got over 326 million people living here in the United States.

Using oversimplified math, we can divide the annual budget of the VHA by the number of people served, and estimate a cost of ~$7,222 per year, per patient. We can then multiply that by the number of people in the US, and get to a required annual budget of roughly $2.35 trillion for a fully operational Medical Corps.

Even if we could cut that cost in half through efficiencies, there is just no way a non-profit organization would be able to raise enough funds to make this work. Total charitable donations from individuals, estates, foundations and corporations reached a record in 2015, at an estimated $373.25 billion[2]. For this reason, it appears that a government solution is necessary.