Robert Reich. (photo: Richard Morgenstein)
gain
and again the upcoming election you’ll hear conservatives claim that
Medicare - the health insurance program for America’s seniors - is
running out of money and must be pared back.Baloney. Medicare isn’t the problem. In fact, Medicare is more efficient than private health insurance.The real problem is that the costs of health care are expected to rise steeply.
Medicare could be the solution – the logical next step after the Affordable Care Act toward a single-payer system.
Please see the accompanying video – #11 in our series on ideas to make the economy work for the many rather than for the few. And please share.
Some background: Medicare faces financial problems in future years because of two underlying trends that will affect all health care in coming years, regardless of what happens to Medicare:
The first is that healthcare costs are rising overall - not as fast as they were rising before the Affordable Care Act went into effect, but still rising too quickly.
The second is that the giant postwar baby boom is heading toward retirement and older age. Which means more elderly people will need more health care, adding to the rising costs.
So how should we deal with these two costly trends? By making Medicare available to all Americans, not just the elderly.
Remember, Medicare is more efficient than private health insurers whose administrative costs and advertising and marketing expenses are eating up billions of dollars each year.
If more Americans were allowed to join Medicare, it could become more efficient by using its growing bargaining power to get lower drug prices, lower hospital bills, and healthier people.
Allowing all Americans to join Medicare is the best way to control future healthcare costs while also meeting the needs of the baby boomer and other Americans.
Everyone should be able to sign up for Medicare on the healthcare exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act.This would begin to move America away from its reliance on expensive private health insurance, and toward Medicare for all – a single payer system.
Medicare isn’t a problem. It’s part of the solution.
Comments
+40
#
2015-06-23 15:47
Medicare is, indeed, a
key part of the solution, as Professor Reich argues. The problem is
clearly protecting Medicare and building on it to provide powerful,
effective healthcare to citizens of every economic bracket.
+2
#
2015-06-24 05:40
Quoting Caliban:
And by making Medicare that most precious of Republican ideas, a flat tax, so that the rich pay the same 2% as the rest of us do, it would be solvent for millions of years. Of course mankind probably won't at the rate we're destroying the planet and using up all of our resources, but....
Medicare is, indeed, a key part of the solution, as Professor Reich argues. The problem is clearly protecting Medicare and building on it to provide powerful, effective healthcare to citizens of every economic bracket.
And by making Medicare that most precious of Republican ideas, a flat tax, so that the rich pay the same 2% as the rest of us do, it would be solvent for millions of years. Of course mankind probably won't at the rate we're destroying the planet and using up all of our resources, but....
+41
#
2015-06-23 17:11
The Trade Adjustment
Assistance bill, passed today by corporate-owned Senate Republicans and a
handful of turncoat Democrats, will draw $450 million from Medicare,
ostensibly to "assist" Americans who lose their jobs because of the
Trans-Pacific Partnership.
One more way to steal from public programs and then scream that the program is in trouble. One more way the 1% robs taxpayers to line their own pockets AND ship more jobs overseas.
What happened to all those "heroic job creators" who got voted into Congress last year? Job creators, my a$$.
One more way to steal from public programs and then scream that the program is in trouble. One more way the 1% robs taxpayers to line their own pockets AND ship more jobs overseas.
What happened to all those "heroic job creators" who got voted into Congress last year? Job creators, my a$$.
+18
#
2015-06-23 18:45
Indeed. The problem
is fascism, although calling it that does not solve it and will likely
get you dismissed as a nut case or ignored entirely.
That term is generally used today to indicate the interests of a highly militarized state being united with those of big business, often including those of some organized religious group, and often with a scapegoat. Note that under this definition it can only exist in a highly industrialized nation (big business).
Note as well that the choices available to us do not include voting it out of office, much less driving it out by street demonstrations. Rear guard actions in both of those arenas are probably necessary, but the real questions we all need to be thinking about and acting upon have to do with how we respond, how we even survive in this situation. I am betting on small-scale local and regional organization or enterprise for meeting local and regional needs, focusing on strengthening local economies and more fundamentally communities for resilience in what are likely to be very trying times. I recommend the Transition Towns movement, and its US branch, transitionus.or g, as a place to start; also the (Schumacher) centerforneweco nomics.org.
That term is generally used today to indicate the interests of a highly militarized state being united with those of big business, often including those of some organized religious group, and often with a scapegoat. Note that under this definition it can only exist in a highly industrialized nation (big business).
Note as well that the choices available to us do not include voting it out of office, much less driving it out by street demonstrations. Rear guard actions in both of those arenas are probably necessary, but the real questions we all need to be thinking about and acting upon have to do with how we respond, how we even survive in this situation. I am betting on small-scale local and regional organization or enterprise for meeting local and regional needs, focusing on strengthening local economies and more fundamentally communities for resilience in what are likely to be very trying times. I recommend the Transition Towns movement, and its US branch, transitionus.or g, as a place to start; also the (Schumacher) centerforneweco nomics.org.
+16
#
2015-06-23 18:46
Consider yourself
fortunate, and keep a sharp eye on the reactionaries in your government
who seem to be determined to make your country more like ours.
0
#
2015-06-23 21:13
# elizabethblock 2015-06-23 17:13
"I live in Canada. "Socialist" Canada. Eat your hearts out."
Thanks for your loving thought.
"I live in Canada. "Socialist" Canada. Eat your hearts out."
Thanks for your loving thought.
+20
#
2015-06-23 17:31
Of course Medicare, which has a 3% overhead compared to 30% for private insurance,shoul d
have been made available to all. However President Obama, in order to
pass the ACA, sabotaged that possibilty along with the public option at a
time when the Democrats controlled both houses and a single payer bill
was widely supported. He then presided over the public bashing of
Medicare, which no Republican president had dared do, to justify
stealing $750 billion from medicare over the next ten years to subsidize
the ACA, giving credence to the budget cutters' arguments.
+4
#
2015-06-23 23:29
I'd say that the
President concluded that history and Congressional sentiment were not
yet on the side of Medicare for all and that the ACA had the best chance
of bringing broadly based coverage to the country despite Congress's
foolish but long-standing resistance to such programs.
But the ACA is a big first step towards federal Coverage for all, and the rest will follow.
But the ACA is a big first step towards federal Coverage for all, and the rest will follow.
+18
#
2015-06-23 18:40
"LIAR! Medicare for ALL!" should be a resounding cry from all of us every time those a-holes open their mouths to bash it.
+16
#
2015-06-23 20:53
As if Medicare
doesn't have enough leaky holes in it already, it's had to bear the
fraudulent assault of these ravening, greedy, hungry Wolves (with
apologies to these beautiful animals) of the US medical establishment,
who already do pretty damn well from whatever they dish out in the name
of treatment.
Read on to power.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/20/1394908/-U-S-Attorney-General-Lynch-Announces-Biggest-Medical-Fraud-Bust-In-DOJ-History-243-Arrested
I'm just glad they were nabbed in the act but this is just the ones that were caught.
Now we know why Medicare is allegedly in financial trouble (if indeed it is, which I don't necessarily buy into).
Quod erat Demonstrandum.
Read on to power.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/20/1394908/-U-S-Attorney-General-Lynch-Announces-Biggest-Medical-Fraud-Bust-In-DOJ-History-243-Arrested
I'm just glad they were nabbed in the act but this is just the ones that were caught.
Now we know why Medicare is allegedly in financial trouble (if indeed it is, which I don't necessarily buy into).
Quod erat Demonstrandum.
+8
#
2015-06-23 22:26
Medicare is one of
the most functional programs in our entire government. Small , not for
profit retirement homes are able to provide good loving care to seniors
who would have no real options without Medicare . Ask yourself if either
our " Intelligence/se curity"
apparatus or our bloated with useless officers military are ever held
to that kind of scrutiny? Even the loaded phrases used , entitlement
programs, welfare queens, homeless , are designed to corrupt accurate
thinking. We are not even informed of the true military/ intelligence
gathering budget or size of the force. How efficient is all our drone
bombing? Even taking the very shaky morality off the table of these "
counterinsurgen cy
programs" , there is zero attempt to justify their expense. There is
very substantial collateral damage but do we ever know or debate the
actual value of these kind of programs? No! And yet , somehow, there is
endless squeezing of the working poor and every program comes under
close scrutiny. Is this insane or what? And how and why do we all put up
with this? Maybe it's time to stop being passively stupid.
