I guess I'm just confused. Doesn't Medicare work? I won't be on it until next year, but my Mother and my nearly 100-year-old Mother-in-law have not had any problems getting the care they need. My wife is a home health physical therapist, and 85% of the patients she sees are on Medicare. There are some limits, such as the number of visits she can make to a patient's home, but they are reasonable and prudent. There don't seem to be any delays, and the quality of care seems to be excellent. Isn't Medicare basically a government program? I know it's administered by different private companies in different states, and is probably closer to a "single payer" program.
the key is, everyone is accepted, everyone pays approximately the same rates, supplemental programs are low in cost, and nobody seems to suffer under it.
My naive idea is simply to put everyone on Medicare from birth. We're all paying something towards it, now. If we, or our employers, paid the same amount we are now paying for private coverage into the Medicare plan, there should be plenty of money to cover it. Private insurance cost employers something like $243 Billion in 2001, the last year I could find figures. It's bound to be a lot more, now. Add in government health coverage and private policies like mine, and the total is probably somewhere above $600 Billion. the latest figure I could find for all health care spending is $617 Billion.
Think of the savings if indigent people and other without insurance (currently over 40 Million people), could get preventative care, and if people stopped using emergency rooms for their primary care doctors, as so many indigents now do.
Just because other countries have failed to set up a good system doesn't mean we have to follow suit. We already have some of the best health care in the world; it just isn't equally available to all of our citizens. Whether we know it or not, we're already paying for the care of uninsured indigents because the cost of health care to the private insurance companies is raised to cover the non-payers. That's kind of stupid, because the uninsured wait until they have no other choice to get care, and it always ends up being more expensive.
Of course, the best way to guarantee that cheapskate politicians don't cut the delivery of care is to elect liberals (oops, I blew my non-political stance, but I couldn't help it).
the key is, everyone is accepted, everyone pays approximately the same rates, supplemental programs are low in cost, and nobody seems to suffer under it.
My naive idea is simply to put everyone on Medicare from birth. We're all paying something towards it, now. If we, or our employers, paid the same amount we are now paying for private coverage into the Medicare plan, there should be plenty of money to cover it. Private insurance cost employers something like $243 Billion in 2001, the last year I could find figures. It's bound to be a lot more, now. Add in government health coverage and private policies like mine, and the total is probably somewhere above $600 Billion. the latest figure I could find for all health care spending is $617 Billion.
Think of the savings if indigent people and other without insurance (currently over 40 Million people), could get preventative care, and if people stopped using emergency rooms for their primary care doctors, as so many indigents now do.
Just because other countries have failed to set up a good system doesn't mean we have to follow suit. We already have some of the best health care in the world; it just isn't equally available to all of our citizens. Whether we know it or not, we're already paying for the care of uninsured indigents because the cost of health care to the private insurance companies is raised to cover the non-payers. That's kind of stupid, because the uninsured wait until they have no other choice to get care, and it always ends up being more expensive.
Of course, the best way to guarantee that cheapskate politicians don't cut the delivery of care is to elect liberals (oops, I blew my non-political stance, but I couldn't help it).
