Don’t buy the baloney that America cannot afford more Medicare, or even the Medicare we have at the moment. What America cannot afford is any more private health insurance. My apologies to all those running the private health insurers.
It’s nothing against you personally. But you simply cannot compete with Medicare. You cost us way more for the same results, or worse.
We just can’t afford you anymore. Private health insurance is the major reason healthcare in America costs so much. Most other rich countries use a public insurance model, like Medicare.
And as a result, they pay way, way less for their healthcare — even though, in many cases, they actually get better healthcare than we do. And this is without even touching the other big argument for “Medicare for All” — namely, that it would cover the nearly 30 million Americans who today don’t have health insurance. Forget that compassionate argument for a moment.
Medicare for All would be cheaper, a lot cheaper, for the rest of us. Those who insist that a government-run insurance program must be more expensive, in the face of all the evidence, are simply putting blind political ideology ahead of facts. The numbers aren’t even open to dispute.
Last year, both Medicare and America’s private health insurers spent about the same amount on healthcare for their beneficiaries. Medicare (line 10, “total expenditures,” on page 12 of the most recent Medicare trustees’ annual report here) spent $1,210.1 billion, or almost exactly $1.2 trillion. Meanwhile America’s private health insurers (see line 6 on page 1 of the latest U.S.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
