Medicare for all???

The proposal by Bernie covers a lot more than current Medicare including vision and dental coverage.

 

The cost of Medicare is readily available on line. Simply compare it to current insurance costs.

 

He has to pitch only the "positives". He can't tell those of us with health insurance that we're going to be forced to pay taxes to cover the health care costs of those who don't contribute and then share health care resources with those same people.

 

I'm a fan of advantage plan extension.
Back into it by simply making it available. People and business would be nuts not to switch.
The problem with plans like Bernie's is there is no easy way to capture the money currently paid by business.

 

Medicare competes with private insurance. That's why it's massively more successful than Medicaid.

 

Does private insurance offer coverage to those over 65?

 

Of course it does.

 

Oh. Obama care. I get it.

 

I guess you've ever heard of a Medicare supplement. I'm pretty sure those existed before Obama.

Oops.

 

Medicare costs have nothing to do with actual medical costs. It only mandates what and what not tests the doctor will be paid for doing.

 

Of course they do. Medicare has to pay claims which are generally based on the cost of care.

 

Medicare pays 80% of the charges they approve of -- not deemed reasonable -- for any medical procedure that they approve paying for in the first place. They do not pay for many procedures that private insurers cover and usually pays much less than private insurers do for the ones they do cover.

That $144,60 does not include the deductible and certainly not the thousands that were paid into Medicare as taxes for decades.

 

A large portion of Medicare costs are buried and hidden in other agencies and camouflaged off the books as other expenses.

 

Medicare pays the docs on a negotiated overall cost of care for that procedure. If you have supplemental ins coverage they generally pick up the balance which is usually about 10% additional. Medicare also determines what care is normal and accepted and that is all they cover.

 

Another myth.

 

If you have health care that has "no premiums, no deductibles, no co-insurance, no co-pays and expanded medical coverage"...then you have universal or national health care...

 

This is what I was refering to.

 

Nonsense. Medicare decides what they can afford to pay and it has little to do with the actual cost of care. Look at any bill and it is easy to see the prevailing rates and how much Medicare will pay, almost always much less. Medicare also decides which procedures to cover at all based on their economic analyses, not on a doctor's analysis. For instance Medicare does not cover many procedures -- vaccinations, e.g. -- that Obamacare forced private insurers to cover. For just one specific of many examples, doctors recommend a smoker get an MRI about every five years which Medicare covers (at their internal determined rate) unless you are over 75 in which case Medicare evidentially decided it is more cost effective to let one go ahead and get and die of lung cancer.

 

A minor clarification. Medicare supplement plans pay the 20% of the Medicare approved rate that Medicare doesn't pay for. Only two of the ten supplement plans pay for some of the doctors charges that exceed the Medicare rate.

 

The only fantasy myth here is the one that ballyhoos that government run medical insurance is cheaper and better than private insurance. There is a whole industry that propagandizes that myth to satisfy ideology.

 

If true you should have no trouble sourcing it.

Sanders cited Woolhandler and Himmelstein’s article estimating $504 billion in savings from converting to a single-payer system. But the article’s authors admitted that "any such estimate is imprecise" and cited other research placing the number closer to $383 billion.

https://www.politifact.com/factchec...ing-administrative-costs-private-insurance-a/

 

Many studies have estimated the 10-year government cost of Bernie's plan at $25 trillion ti $35 trillion. That's more than a 50% increase from today's total annual federal spending. Granted these studies don't itemize the savings offsets but the savings that Bernie gets by paying doctors and hospitals only Medicare rates for all patients is, to say the least, not an optimistic or happy thought. There have been thousands of doctors who left the profession over the past decade because of the meager reimbursement Medicare paid for just Medicare patients. There are many cases where Medicare reimbursement does not even cover the incurred cost of providing the care.

FYI, Politifact has poor credibility.

 

And how much are we spending now without covering everyone?

 

Must be nice living adjacent to your big brother that provides for your defense spending while lecturing about how great their public healthcare is while not chipping in to cover defense costs.

 

You have a firm grip on the obvious.