Decriminalization of non-medical cannabis in the United States and federal prisons and an upwards of 750,000 in local jails for marijuana related crimes. Today there are over 1.5 million Americans serving time in an institution. If marijuana was decriminalized, these numbers were further be reduced again to below 700,000 inmates and save the taxpayers billions of dollars per year. The United States spends an estimated $68 billion per year on prisoners with a third of that number have been incarcerated for non-violent drug crimes including a sixth of those numbers as marijuana drug related offenses. A reduction in the prison population due to decriminalizing marijuana could save an
Healthcare reform debate in the United States For example, the Cleveland Clinic, considered a low-cost, best-practices hospital system, has 1,400 billing clerks to support 2,000 doctors. Further, the insurance companies have their own overhead functions and profit margins, much of which could be eliminated with a single payer system. Economist Paul Krugman estimated in 2005 that converting from the current private insurance system to a single-payer system would save $200 billion per year, primarily via insurance company overhead. One advocacy group estimated savings as high as $400 billion annually for 2009 and beyond. The U.S. system is often compared with that of its northern neighbor, Canada (see