UBI is not guaranteed to make the majority of people better off. Its effects and consequences are highly dependent upon the source of revenue from which it is financed. You have to know the source of revenue for UBI and how other prices in the economy react to it in order to determine if it will make the majority of people wealthier or poorer.
If UBI is funded via taxes on labor and capital rather than taxes on land, it will subsidize landowners and banks and allow them to charge higher rent and make more from mortgages. If the price which a family pays for shelter, rent, and mortagages increases in proportion to the rate which their income increases from UBI, then will not actually be any wealthier.
Society will actually be much poorer, as we would be redistributing money from productive workers and entrepreneurs to unproductive landholders and lenders who were able to capture the increased public spending through higher land prices and rent.
It's basically not possible to do that without making those things cheaper somehow. Convert the entire US federal budget to UBI and it is around 10k per person. Healthcare alone per person is already 9k. Housing is maybe another 5k. And this is before those things get more expensive as people consume more of them.
Most UBI schemes have an increasing tax rate so that you gradually get less money and once you're past a certain threshold, say $60k per year, you are paying the same in additional taxes as you're getting in UBI payments.
The net result is that you don't need to fund UBI payments for nearly the entire population.
The US federal budget is 3.8 Trillion. Using parent's numbers, you would need $5.3 Trillion to just cover healthcare + housing, assuming zero inflation.
What tax rate are you proposing will genenerate $5.3 Trillion off of taxing the rich?
Trivial. Tax the top 1 percent at least 75 percent for about 2 trillian or more once you close off loopholes, ban insurance companies altogether and make hospitals publish their prices, and require estimates for any work to be done, and you suddenly have a balanced budget.
So to recap, the key to lowering prices in healthcare is (a) strip consumers of negotiating power (b) not try to haggle the prices down when providers consistently try to raise them?
The mechanism is open competition. Right now hospitals and clinics don't have to give you a price for their services, and you have to pay them whatever they ask for. It should work just like a mechanic or a lawyer, you are told the fee, you pay it, you get service. Don't like the price up front? Shop around.
