This is an approach to MfA that I have not heard explicitly, but it really makes sense. Let people keep their employer based insurance plans but force those plans to offer the same benefits as Medicare does as the floor to coverage…ie the minimum standard. So if your employer offers a plan that is not as good as Medicare it would have to change to be better or they wouldn’t be allowed in the market. You can read the piece here.
Sure. Why not? Or just give me a public option. It all seems to wind up in the same place. Private insurance exists in part because it is protected from having to compete with Medicare.
My thinking is they plan to use the “Medicare” bureaucracy to administer MfA, but the actual plan would be considerably different. Sanders has said everything will be covered without deductibles. That is very different than what actual Medicare is now. In other words. Medicare is the slogan, not the plan.
That’s really what we’re talking about – because Medicare does not cover services that are essential parts of a health insurance plan for younger people. It might be a public option administered by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, but it would not be identical to the current Medicare program – for example, it would need to provide coverage for annual physicals, pregnancy, and the like.
The easiest way to set a minimum set of benefits for insurance is through regulation, which is how the PPACA supplaced junk insurance plans. If you regulate so that you define a basic set of benefits, then offer a public option (call it Medicare4All, or whatever) that includes those options, then you’re going to set both a floor for benefits and a floor for costs. Private insurers would either have to beat the cost or offer additional benefits that their customers deemed to be worth the additional cost.
I would like to see deductibles and coinsurance eliminated, and copayments minimized. My personal experience is that deductibles and coinsurance do not have the theoretically desired effect of reducing over-utilization of healthcare, but instead tend to cause some people to forego needed care and otherwise largely shift insurance costs from the employer or insurer onto the individual (potentially increasing overall cost, even if reducing cost to employers and insurers).
Copayment: The fixed fee that you pay on the spot for a medical visit, prescription, etc.
Deductible: The amount you must pay out-of-pocket before you are eligible for insurance benefits.
Coinsurance: A portion of the cost of medical care that you must pay after you have fully paid your deductible.
But as you intimate, that’s not “free”; that’s cost-shifting.
Medicare part A free.
Medicare part B starting price, 135.50 per person.
Family of 4, 542 a month.
You still ned to pay the deductibles, there is no max out of pocket, no dental, no vision, many doctors refuse new medicare patients due to low payouts.
Leads you to one conclusion, it’s not medicare that is being proposed, it’s not cheap, people are expecting others to pay for their healthcare.
People are essentially stupid and love repeating the chant lines brought to you by our politicians.
Warren has been absolutely unwilling to admit the obvious (to sentient beings anyway)-that middle class tax rates will go up- way up. Taxing the rich, even at egregious rates, would not begin to cover the costs of medicare for all. all the ‘biyonahs’ in the US total wealth is approx. 2.7 trillion.
Even stealing it all from them would not cover a single year of medicare for all, let alone free college for any half-wit major, and forgiving student loan debt.
we can look to fabulous Denmark, where cradle to grave benefits are amazing, along with generous maternity leave and a host of other goodies. In the US, youstart paying income tax at $41,000. In Denmark, you start at $20600, and pay 70% over the ‘tippy top’ of 39000 euros ($42,861).
So it won’t just be the rich who will be sodomized by the IRS to pay for all this pander.