Medicare for All

General General Discussion
1

Isn’t this a misnomer? We all pay into Medicare for decades before we start to draw benefits. Medicare also has some private insurance built into it, correct?

Isn’t what they are really touting is ‘Medicaid for All’? It comes out of general taxes and the govt pays for everything. They are going to get rid of all private insurance, so no co-insurance.

2

It’s just single payer, Gov’t controlled death panels…oops…I mean healthcare. Medicare for all is just the spin.

3

Medicare for all= Quality healthcare for none.

4

I am qualified for Medicare and received it for me at age 65. Without paying for all of the optional parts it is pretty much all but worthless. Basic Medicare is hospital insurance. Problem is if your stay isn’t longer than 3 days it pays nothing. If you opt for all of the parts your cost will eat up most of your SS income. The sad truth is… even with Medicare the health care system will bankrupt you with the government’s consent! Medicare for all won’t solve anything unless you have NO assets. People with no assets don’t pay taxes.

5

Considering the incredible amount that an individual pays for shitty coverage with extremely high deductibles, single payer coverage isn’t, in and of itself, a bad idea…Ideally. However, it can’t exist in this current system, because of the corruption of insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and healthcare providers. They already have a monopoly on the entire healthcare system, so they charge pretty much whatever they want. So the answer seems to be, why not just have the government pay for it as a public service? But all that would happen is that prices would get cranked up even more; it would eventually bankrupt the country. Something needs to be done about these companies who are playing with people’s lives for profit before we can talk about reforming anything else.

6

Yep, it will be like the DMV of health care.

7

Medicare for All has almost nothing to do with Medicare. The biggest thing they have in common is that M4A would replace Medicare.

It works like this. M4A would replace all existing insurance and copayments. The government would set the price that it is willing to pay for services, devices and medications. Medical care would be provided by private providers except the Veteran’s Administration and the Indian Health Service, which wouldn’t change under most (all?) proposals.

So the government would get control of health care spending and ratchet it down to level that the US hasn’t seen in decades. A typical estimate is a 40% reduction in health care spending.

The problems are:

  1. Availability. We don’t have the doctors or facilities to treat everyone if everyone could suddenly afford to go.
  2. Cost. While the cost would fall we would sever the link between people who receive care and people who pay for it. Most proposals call for a mix of payroll, income and capital gains taxes to pay for care. This would replace your existing premiums and co-pays. In practice, the people that would be harmed by this are those poor enough for Medicaid and people making more than median income, who may pay more in taxes than their previous plans cost.
  3. Additional Services. If you want to skip the line you’d have to pay cash for service. I’m told it is common in Canada where an MRI might take months unless you pay $400 CDN to see a private provider.
  4. Freeloaders. Plenty of people would quit working if they didn’t need to pay for health care.

Advantages:

  1. Stability. There are no unexpected bills.
  2. Decoupling from Employment. Forming a business would be much easier if you didn’t have to worry about providing benefits. Especially a small business.
  3. Cost. For about half of Americans this would immediately put more money in their pockets.
  4. Administrative Costs. Your typical doctors office would pull in almost as much revenue but pay much less for office staff.

My take? I think we should look at a dual payer system that looks more like Medicare proper. Everyone gets a basic level of insurance, the poor get a (crappy) layer on top of that and you can buy your own insurance to get better care. That controls costs well in Australia.

8

I have a relative in Sweden. He had a bone spur in the heel of his foot. He was given pain meds for 14 months and then was able to have the surgery to remove it. Long waits are the norm with government provided healthcare. In the US, the surgery could have taken place in less than 30 days.

9

Are the long waits because of rationing? And who decides who gets what? And when you’re really old, do you get thrown under the bus?

10

So when Grandma’s operation is too expensive for Medicare to pay for, or four year old little Kimmy has to wait six months before she can start her treatments for her cancer, we’ve got a whole new reason for Civil War II.
I waiting for someone to tell me “If you like your Doctor you can keep him.” Or “If you like your insurance, you can keep it.”
Socialists want control, they want control of your life and your money.

11

Thanks GH41 and SethB (and others).

GH41, I kind of knew that there was still cash out of pocket. I really think that may be achillies heal of this. When people find out that ‘free’ ain’t free.

SethB- on the cost savings to docs offsetting lower payments for services- I think that is an idea, but probably won’t happen. Sure coding fees for insurance companies is a pain, but that is clerical wages. Doc fees, drugs and tests are where the money is at. I hope you are right, I just think that is a wish, not a reality.

Wait till all those upper middle class progressives see what their tax rates have to do to cover this…

So really, what the left really wants is Medicaid for all. You don’t have co-pays or co-insurance with that- and it pays for ibuprofen and everything.

I know people hate insurance companies, but a big one here in CO is going to go under because of Obama care and the mistakes they made in pricing and plans that they offered- and by that I mean too cheap and too many benefits (plus people joining and only paying for a few months till they get services and then ‘dropping’ out).

12

The only way any entity can keep medical costs down is to ration care. That’s already being done on a fairly broad scale in the US by all of the insurance companies, and certainly by Medicare/Medicaid and the VA, but in a single payer system…yeah…death panels or something equivalent are inevitable. Health care rationing is the only way to keep costs down while maintaining quality.

If/when “Medicare for All” becomes reality, be aware that in your declining years your “doctor” is going to actually be a nurse. There won’t be enough doctors.

13

Health costs in the US are at 18% of GDP. You’d better believe that the government wants control of that vast segment of the US economy. And you’d better believe that, eventually, they’re going to get it. The wheels for that are already in motion.

14

My nephew works for a large regional hospital. He said 60% of the people who walked through ER door last year were uninsured. Guess what that does to the cost of healthcare?? My first wife was a scrub nurse for a neurosurgeon. The cost of her GL policy was 6 figures per year and that was 35 years ago! You don’t have to look far to find the reason why healthcare is expensive. Medicare for all might work if combined with tort reform.

15

I just wanna die in the age of socialized medicine - to see who resurrects me first. The Obamessiah… of the TRUE Messiah. :rolleyes:

MY money’s on the latter…

16

Just the fact that gov’t will, without smoke and mirrors, be providing free abortions, payed for by me and people who think like me, is more than enough for me to be totally against it.

17

I am quoting you but also addressing this to most of the posts here.

I am an executive in a hospital based health plan that administrates Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, and the ACA. I know about hospital costs and health insurance.

This that think that Medicare for All (M4A) is a good idea have never dad to use Medicare. As an insurance it is not good at all. If you do not have a Medicare supplement insurance when you turn 65 you are screwed.

GH41, for your part. That part about 60% of the people that walk into the ER are uninsured is crap. A lot of them do have insurance but don’t want to have to pay the huge deductible for their cheap plans. The ACA took care of everyone having insurance. Now they are supposed to. Oh wait, M4A will take care of that… NOPE, you still have to register for it… and fay a fine if you are late… and it can be terminated if you don’t pay. So you will still not have insurance like a bunch of people that don’t today.

You also have to understand that the ER is the most expensive form of visit a person can have. This is because of the stupid EMTALA Law (Emergency Medical Treatment And Labor Act) that requires treatment at the ER for all IF they take Medicare and Medicaid. So will all f the illegals get this new M4A? Because they use the ER are their person clinic, this is a fact as I have seen the reports from our ER visits. As for Tort reform, we have this in Texas, not much of a help. And we also DID NOT Expand Medicaid because we did not wan to pay for it.

M4A is simply Socialized medicine and Hmac is correct, it is a lot of money and the Dems that want to control it. Even if there is M4A there is still going to be insurance. If you want real healthcare you will have to have it. So you will be paying for both.

There is not advantages for M4A except for those that already have really crappy insurance. Someone mentioned Small Businesses, it will not help them at all. They will not have to pay for insurance directly but the tax increase will put many out of business. The same will go for the economy, it will take a huge hit as a great deal of this countries disposable income will now go to taxes to pay for this program. This will mean less money being spent and that is not a good thing for the overall economy.

There is a reason that healthcare cost so much in the US. It is because someone has to pay for all of the R&D for the rest of the world. In the past 30 years the US has been credits for vast majority of the medical and pharmaceutical advances. ( You can simply Google this because I am not going to post a huge Bibliography) The rest of the world reaps the benefits of this and they don’t have the ability to conduct this type of research as the bases behind socialized medicine are counter intuitive to this process. Also the cost is so high because of the socialized programs that we currently have. The ACA has increased the risk and cost to providers that take that insurance. They can get paid for a claim and then 90 days later have to pay that money back as the patients insurance retroactively lapsed. Great system… The Risk Adjustment for the ACA and Medicare is also killing the insurance companies that administer it.

The people that want to see M4A in place need to ONLY go tto the VA for one year. They will see what a true government based and run health system looks like with no penalties, oversight, or motivation.

It boils down to one thing, IF YOU WANT HEALTHCARE PAY FOR IT. IT IS NOT A RIGHT, IT IS A SERVICE. IF YOU WANT IT, GET A JOB AND PAY FOR IT.

18

you hit a lot of nails right on the head doc. These two comments stood out to me. Ne’er truer words spoken. I have to go to the VA at least monthly. We have a large regional VA medical center here in CENTEX and I swear 99% of the service/support related staff act as though they are doing you a favor by doing their flipping job. Half the doctors we have - if not more are from another country and you may think, “an educated doc is an educated doc” but those of you who served know the military, especially the Army and I imagine the Marine Corp is a different world
And I mean different WORLD. These foreign doctors don’t have a clue about the culture of the military. I distinctly recall seeing a doc from India for a C&P right after I ETS’d. He had me do shit that was downright painful. Being fresh out of the Army after 15 yrs I didn’t know that I should not force my range of motion beyond pain. The DAV later schooled me on this, but st the time I swear this clowns goal was to see me receive zero compensation for documented injuries - nothing for the shoulders I’ve had 4 surgeries on and the knees that have had more orthoscopes poked in than I can remember. I know this isn’t health plan related, but it is in terms of principle of treatment philosophy, and it shows just how F’d up the VA is. I have not seen any improvements over the years. Sure I’ve ran into good docs. Docs that cared for and about the veteran, but they do not hold the majority. Most of those particular docs were prior service as well. They got it and understood the culture of the military

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19

And the best way to do it is to control your health care.

Plus, they will be offing the elderly, handicapped, mentally disturbed, and any other group they find undesirable. That’ll cut down on the waiting times.

20

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Yup. All of the above.

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