expanding Medicare for single payer

I don't quite understand how this would be paid for. Are we expecting that the reduction in cost to the government for the uninsured will cover it or is there an increase or additional tax that would be necessary? Help me understand how we would fund this. I'm also curious about the projected bankruptcy of Medicare and how that will play into this.

On a side note from a personal experience with Medicare. My mother received 1 month of rehabilitation therapy after a stroke through Tricare before they cut her off and then tried to get Medicare to cover additional therapy and some in home care and she was flatly denied which forced me, my brother and father to care for and do our own rehabilitation therapy with her on a rotating schedule for a little over 6 months until she was able to do things on her own again. She's doing much better now several years later but the experience didn't encourage me to support Medicare or the Tricare coverage which was through my retired military father.

I need some serious convincing on this single payer Medicare expansion idea.

for the same result?

my private coverage will pay for a maximum of 3 years of in home care for a $350 flat payment and rehabilitation services are completely covered.


It would be nice if you could answer my question about paying for Medicare expansion. That was the main thing I was interested in.

providing supplemental insurance. That way, it would seem to me, would please everyone. Medicare would be the easiest way to expand healthcare for all, control costs, and move to more of a single payer system. Currently, the costs associated with the current system is unsustainable with a growing amount of uninsured persons we are always paying for by subsidizing hospitals for their care. The whole key is having one payer so billions can be saved by eliminating all the duplication.

into single payer. That doesn't mean the policies of Medicare have to exist after that's done. It would need an overhaul to take into account a much younger population being added to the pool. It would be paid for by premiums, just like an insurance company. The only difference is they would be a fraction of big insurance premiums. Plan B - a national sales tax could pay for it (exclude food, medicine, clothes under $100).

Excellent care. Weeks in rehab, followed by weeks of in home care. It seemed like there was a nurse or an aid coming nearly every other day. She's never been denied any need.

I'm not questioning your story, but I'm sure that there are also plenty of stories like yours about private insurance. Do you know for a fact that medicare is worse than private insurance about these kinds of things? One story (either yours or mine) doesn't prove a lot. The question is which is better overall? What is the big picture? I keep hearing that Canadians overall are healthier and live longer. If that's true than what does it say?

More than half of all bankruptcies are caused by inability to pay medical bills. That, combined with more than 47 million uninsured in this country, indicates that relying solely on private insurance is a flawed strategy.

on how this will be paid for or is it all speculation at the moment. That's what I want to know because I haven't heard of one.

would come from. The theory is that we give the gummint all the money we now give to insurance companies and the savings will pay for a lot. Other than that, raise taxes somehow, and maybe reduce benefits lower than they are now.

But, whatever savings are there can't cover another 40 million people now uninsured and include all the stuff now covered under supplementary coverages people buy. And, since medicare contracts with those same insurance companies, what savings are we talking about?

It also doesn't address medical costs, which have been rising faster than inflation for years. That's not medical cost inflation as we know it, but mostly new, and very expensive, diagnostics and treatments. And it doesn't address the aging population, which will use a LOT of this new medical technology.

The simple fact is that we very likely can't afford much in the way of improved medical care without some serious thinking about how we deliver it here. I don't doubt that in a just world doctors, nurses, and maybe lab techs should be paid more than bricklayers, but we stack the deck when doctors graduate owing half a million in student loans and are pushed to the money end of the business rather than the doctoring end. And that's just the tip of the iceberg with the problems unique to the US.

My mother spent 4 hours in the hospital one morning for a not terribly complicated procedure and got a bill for $17,000. It was a fair fight with Medicare and Blue Cross to get someone to pay it, too, but most of it ended up being paid. Where the hell did $17,000 go in the two and a half hours actually in prep, recovery, and and the OR?

That doesn't help the push for it to be implemented very much.

Single payer is a plan. Mandating private insurance may be a plan but not a good one.

A plan would involve details on what is covered, how care is to be provided, who is to provide it, and how the providers will be paid. Where does the funding for it come from? I've seen various ideas thrown out but those pushing the hardest have not laid out a plan that we can look at and say that's good, that's bad, let's change this a bit and so on.

http://www.pnhp.org/

It's a matter of priorities. Public tax dollars currently subsidise the current private system and yet the costs keep skyrocketing. We all pay for the uninsured.

in some form is what I got out of reading the proposals. You can collect taxes in many ways and just saying taxes isn't good enough for what I'm looking for.

All I know is I pay the either $1200 a month for standard health insurance or $775 a month with a $5450 deductable. Why? Why must I pay that amount while persons in other industrialized nations do not?

I'm over 30

http://www.pnhp.org/publications/proposal_of_the_physicians_working_group_for_singlepayer_national_health_insurance.php

Who is your employer and is your health insurance guaranteed for life or part of your retirement?

it says taxes but does not get specific.

people don't think of it on those terms though and never figure in county taxes and bonds. Besides, we run massive deficits to finance the biggest expansive military industrial complex in the history of humanity and nobody complains about taxes in relation to that.

will be increased? What is going to be taxed and how is a good thing to know because different taxes will affect different people in different ways.

Where does your county get the money to pay for the hospitals? How have costs risen so rapidly? Is the thought having to pay taxes the reason you seem to oppose single payer, medicare for all or support our private insurance model? Federal income taxes are currently historically low. Even with raising the top rate Obama wants to do will be 10% less than is was under Reagan. We pay more per capita than other other countries do. Yet we are the only industrialized country where citizens have to have fund raisers to pay their medical bills or have gone into medical bankruptcy. There is something wrong with this picture.

there are just so many unanswered questions about what and how people what implemented. I'm just looking for solid answers and there don't seem to be any.

as we do, even with the taxes they appropriate for healthcare. For instance, if someone pays $775 a month for family care with a health savings account where the deductable is $5450 or $1200 a month for standard health insurance, that's $14,750 or $14,400. Do you really think the same person individually would pay an additional $14,000+ in taxes a year for single payer?

Some could pay more than that, some could pay quite a bit less.

I've yet to determine what it is. There is no way our taxes would go up that much.

I'm just looking for answers that don't appear to exist yet.

I'm pretty sure you're no where near 50 yet? Either that or you have a cradle to grave guarantee on your job and health insurance. Or you are so rich it will not matter how much it costs. If not, you will know the current construct sucks at some point and tinkering around the edges of our insurance monopoly will have minimal results.

make that go away and tax them a small increase instead. Especially since it keeps rising 15% a year.

If I took away a $1200/month bill from you and raised your taxes $300/month, I just saved you $900/month.

Do the math.

Doug D.