For Seniors, it's good, not perfect but keeps us out of the poor house but it isn't free. For a family of 5, you would need a supplement to cover what Medicare does not ie, dental, vision, long term care, foot care, diagnostics like certain blood tests, drugs. A family of 5 would pay about 670.00 per month for Medicare, another 300.00 per month for supplemental care, and you still have a copay and pay 20% of your costs. Medicare for all is not the plan people think it is. And it will not be free. If the government was going to supply free health care to everyone, Seniors would have gotten it free 50 years ago.

Many (most) Medicare enrollees elect to have their benefits administered by a private insurer through a Medicare Advantage plan. My husband does this. His Advantage plan includes prescription drug coverage and dental. It operates like an HMO so he pays a predictable co-pay for doctor visits.

You are wrong about the premium for part B, by the way. The premium is $135.50. If you make below a certain income threshold, the premium is less.

In the guide to Medicare that recipients receive each year, every Medicare advantage plan is ranked by patient satisfaction with the plan. The guide clearly lays out how much co-pays are for doctor visits and drugs as well as additional coverage (dental and/or vision) is offered. I pore over my husband's medicare guide like I used to look at the Sears catalog. It's wonderful to have so much choice and such great coverage.

For anyone who wants to know how Medicare really works, then I would suggest they go to the easy-to-understand guide from the government. Here is a good place to start: https://www.medicare.gov/what-medicare-covers/your-medicare-coverage-choices

https://www.fool.com/retirement/2018/10/13/heres-what-medicare-part-b-premiums-will-be-in-201.aspx

But that's an at-the-time subsidy so high earners could continue to pay the higher premiums to subsidize lower earners if we expanded Part B to everyone.

I don't think $460 is burdensome.

I think 42% of people pay $135, and I couldn't find the number of people who get extra help and pay less.

lost in their couch cushions on a daily basis if they had to scrounge for it.

I pay 105 for mine.

His United supplemental policy is free, although he could have paid for a better policy.

Gee. I wonder how that would improve if you mixed in millions of younger healthy premium paying people? People who pay into a private system their entire adult life only to have any “gravy” accumulated over decades wiped out when they get laid off on Uncle Sam’s insurance.

It’s almost like it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to segregate the old sick people pool from the young healthy pool. It’s almost like that is an unsustainable model. It’s almost like that violates the very basic principles of “insurance”

So we'd be increasing providers' workloads by about 20%, while paying them less.

And why would the reimbursement rates need to be held at the same level?

Again, you are basing this nonsense on the backwards model of segregating the elderly and very sick in their own pool.


God forbid people get to see a doctor.

Are you a recent business school graduate?

That's a tempting argument but the numbers don't bear it out.

God forbid people get to see a doctor.


Yes! So do it the right way and just have the government pay the doctors. Quadruple the FQHC budget. Don't add the overhead of a mid-20th-century social insurance scheme that depends on a generational income transfer.

Those poor providers, I feel so sorry for them. Wait. No fuck that. I feel sorry for our young people who can't afford to see a doctor when they are sick. And yet, we expect them to fall in line and vote for politicians who care more for doctors incomes and a hospital profits than for their health because healthcare for all just isn't fiscally responsible.

And yet we have tax breaks for the wealthy, countless unending wars of choice and a budget for the military that probably a small cut in that alone would pay for healthcare for American citizens. Yet all we hear is we can't afford it. Bottom line.

Start treating providers like they are enemies is not a winning plan. No wonder medical school isn’t the draw is used to be along with spending onesentire young adulthood in school with exorbitant medical school costs.

We are facing a critical provider shortage by the way, so by all means keep that narritive up. See what happens.


We can “afford” universal healthcare. The issue is how to go about it. I’m still not convinced M4A is the best way.

When the current young population is avoiding treatment for cost reasons, that really means they can't afford healthcare. And if they were covered the big problem would be that the providers may get less money and have to work harder is reason enough for politicians and Republican voters to be against MFA? It's not a problem that 25% of the current young population avoids treatment for cost reasons? How about we cover everyone, tax billionaires like Schultz and Bloomberg, make the wealthy pay their fair share, cut a small fraction of the military budget, end a couple of unending wars and pay those poor providers a little bit more to take care of that 25% of young Americans who can't afford a basic necessity. We can also get doctors to come to America on visas.

The reasoning being used by the wealthy and a few billionaires and wealthy politicians to justify that MFA is not feasible shows just who is being treated as an enemy by our fiscally responsible politicians



I stand by response to the problem that MFA would be increasing providers' workloads by about 20%, while paying them less is the problem. That's not the problem. The problem is that many people go without health care because they can't afford it.

Many seniors go without care even now.

The statement that "The premium for an individual for Part A (hospital insurance) is $437 / month this year." is not entirely true. $437 is the TOP amount; not everyone pays that. The link you posted says "If you paid Medicare taxes for 30-39 quarters, the standard Part A premium is $240." People who have worked less may also not pay $437 under a Medicare for all plan.

Your last sentence doesn't seem to add up. Are you including a supplement plan in the $600 amount? If so, supplement plans cover the 20 percent, at least mine does - that is the point of them.

The whole argument here seems to be that others are going to have to pay for everyone's healthcare. But we already do that - in other ways such as expensive ER visits when people don't have money for preventative care - so much less effective results even though we spend more than any other country.

I have been on employer plans, some good (working for a state) and most not (working for Private employers), and on Obamacare, and am now on Medicare. Except for the plan when I worked for a state university, Medicare with a supplement is the best. The costs are lower and the supplement plan ensures that, for example, you wont have to come up with $1500 all of a sudden for having a couple of tests done. That means a lot to people with lower incomes who are living month-to-month have that worry and possible reluctance to have things checked out taken away. As I stated, it also reduces costs in the long run because people get problems taken care of before they become severe and/or chronic.

but no one listens. Medicare is only part of the answer. The poor will still avoid taking care of themselves, even with Medicare, because they can't afford the deductible and co-pays or a supplement to cover them.

I am on Medicare currently (I'm retired). Here's what we pay monthly for the two of us:

Medicare payment: $271.00
Supplemental Insurance: $488.04
(this is Plan F supplement which pays for everything medical that Medicare does not so we have no out of pocket costs)
Plan D for drugs: $86.70

That's over $10,000 per year!

My husband and I worked all our lives so contributed to Medicare every year before seeing any benefits, and that's why our Medicare payment is so low. The supplemental insurance seems high, but more than pays for itself for both of us. I recently spent a week in the hospital and had a relatively simple surgery and the hospital bill is already over $36,000. There is more to come. My husband has a chronic problem that must be addressed and what our supplemental pays more than covers the expense. If we could not afford the supplemental (and many cannot) then I don't know what we'd do, except let our health suffer.

The fact that if you develop certain diseases, i.e. Kidney Disease, you will be unable to change supplemental policies. So the company insuring you can raise premiums yearly and you can't choose another, cheaper insurer. It's expensive for us, about $12,000 a year for two relatively healthy people.

via payroll tax all through their careers. Somehow, that money must be supplementing my monthly deduction from Social Security.

Parts A and B are pretty good. No experience with Part C. Part D seems like a joke, maybe it benefits some, but not me. Then, there is no Medicare for vision, dental, hearing, that's all out-of-pocket.

A "Medicare-for-all" that covered everything would be expensive, but worth it, with coverage of all the currently not covered stuff.

here wants that. The people of this country cannot tolerate another 4 years of Republican rule.

People who already have insurance they are happy with through their employers aren't likely to vote for a candidate who says that will be replaced with some unknown. Personally I believe the rollout of our plan will need to be optional, so that people who have employer based insurance can compare the cost of our optional plan to their current employer plan. I just think we will garner more votes with that approach than an undefined or loosely defined slogan. Access and affordability are the real challenges and we need to be clear to voters how we are improving their access and affordability, like a plan that actually eliminates the risk of death, suffering, and bankruptcy to anyone because of a medical condition. Also, there is a lot of support for the ACA and improving it. There are people on the ACA today that might be better off to stay on it, in terms of their own affordability, so they too need to see a plan that clearly shows how they will have options to evaluate before they are required to change. We were once on the verge of having a public option. Perhaps reviving that public option and adding it to the ACA as an improvement could accomplish this and be viewed as a first step in the right direction.

That's why it never adds up in our favor and why it is "unaffordable" is because the medical costs are ridiculous. Also, our doctors are overprescribing medications which has now pushed opioid overdose to the number 1 killer in the US!! Some of that may be non-prescription but much of it is prescribed drugs.

The solution is going to have to cover all aspects, not just coverage. They need MORE coverage, better coverage for the most used services, lower costs for the most common services, less overprescribing, etc.

I would like to reiterate the contracting out to insurers to service the members. That is also why Medicare shows such a low overhead, they contract out the real work to the insurance companies. So for instance, In Indiana its WPS, in North Dakota it’s Noridian, etc.
So those companies carry the burden of the administrative costs, not Medicare. In other words, the much touted 3% administration overhead is somewhat of a misnomer.

Also pointing the $600.00 per month premium is per person. So for a family of 4, that could be $2400.00 a month premium!

I’d also like to point out that right now, Medicare does not pay OB/Gyn pregnancy, no pediatrics, no contraception, and as already mentioned no dental or vision.

In order for Medicare for all to work, it would have to go through a huge overhaul.