End This Govt Shutdown with Medicare-4-All and Complete Wall Funding.

originally posted by: ketsuko

originally posted by: carewemust

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: carewemust
Fiscally, that's a very, very bad trade. Medicare is underwater as it is.

If Medicare is "under water", it's because people are NOT telling their Congressmen to make Medicare a priority in the national budget.

You have a very strange perspective on what health care costs and why when it comes to medicare.

Thank-you. It pays to think outside the box. It's too bad our elected leaders are unable to do so.

a reply to: carewemust

I understand who and why you're suggesting this to help and it's laudable, however my post with link and the text provided from Marketicker clearly demonstrate what you propose just will not work fiscally - my link even had data that said we cannot tax our way out of the problem - just not doable based on math.

Maybe look into "pool" insurance type setup used in many state's to cover uncoverable people for auto products who necessarily do have to pay more for the product but is financially backed by the state.

Trying to use a system federally that will implode by 2024 (and economy with it) is not even viable especially in light of the fact that no reasonable amount of raised taxation will even cure the programs as they exist.

That leaves the oft ignored and politically protected cost issue.

Maybe that is what people ought to be telling their congress critters what they want - "apply the laws and make medical affordable again" go much further on MAGA than bankrupting the system don't cha think?

Paraphrasing here, I not only think outside the box - I burned the box because it was rotten to the core. Time for a new box!

originally posted by: carewemust

originally posted by: ketsuko

originally posted by: carewemust

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: carewemust
Fiscally, that's a very, very bad trade. Medicare is underwater as it is.

If Medicare is "under water", it's because people are NOT telling their Congressmen to make Medicare a priority in the national budget.

You have a very strange perspective on what health care costs and why when it comes to medicare.

Thank-you. It pays to think outside the box. It's too bad our elected leaders are unable to do so.

It wasn't exactly a compliment in this case.

Look at it like this. Part of the reason why our current health care financing is so screwed up is because of Medicare as it is.

Let's say that a health care costs at base $20, and that just for the base service to cover materials and overhead like facility costs (electricity, etc.). I'm not talking about paying the doctor or anything like that.

The government is an insurance provider in the case of Medicare, and what it does to make Medicare cheap is say, "That costs $20? We will only pay $16." Unlike with a private insurance, there is no bargaining because the government can simply mandate -- take it or leave. None of this will reduce the real cost of the service. Those things I cited cost what they actually cost in the real world economy. Just because the government mandates a lower cost for service will not change this.

Now because the government is intentionally undercutting the real cost, that remaining amount has to be shifted somewhere else, like onto the rest of us who pay for that service. So our $20 is now $24, or it might be spread out across multiple customers -- 4 paying $21 or 8 paying $20.50. Or another mechanism doctors and hospitals might try is to artificially increase the cost of the service to try to compensate for the perceived cut services like Medicare will make, so now the base cost for all of us is $24, no matter what.

Because of practices like this one by both government insurance mechanisms like Medicaid and Medicare, and yes, private insurers too, there an arms race in pricing. There is no simple fee for service anymore, and no one knows what anything actually does or should cost.

But lets compound our issues by putting more eggs in perrennial undercutter Medicare's basket! I'm sure that will fix everything and add absolutely no price inflationary pressure at all!

a reply to: carewemust

*sigh*

I can't believe you would post such an absurd thing. The money we could have used for M4A was spent giving such programs to Europeans (via our subsidizing their government functions, providing military might for them). It's gone. Tis nothing but a dream (which would have ended just as badly as we will see the current budget situation end). Socialist programs DO NOT WORK. GOVERNMENT IS FAR LESS EFFICIENT THAN A FREE (or semi-free) MARKET.

a reply to: Dfairlite

It's too bad that President Trump hasn't offered the ability for un-healthy U.S. citizens to buy into Medicare, in exchange for $25 Billion in border security, that includes the required physical barriers.

That would be something (sane) Democrats would jump on!

a reply to: carewemust

ShizzAm!!!

a reply to: carewemust

There is no such thing as "buying into M4A". Here are the numbers:
The average person pays in $36,000 over their lifetime. During JUST their final 15 years they receive an average of $229,000 worth of benefits. This money is not invested in any way. It's a simple piggy bank (well, it's not even that, really).

So now what you're talking about is letting people buy into medicare for ages 18-65. That's 47 more years of coverage. The problem with that is the government is already losing $193,000 PER PERSON on just the final 15 years of someone's life. By 2060 this gap is expected to increase to $513k. Yep half a million dollars per person on just their last 15 years of life.

I know we all love medicare but it's not a program that can continue, much less be expanded. When it was passed it was meant to take care of people for about 4-5 years (life expectancy in 1965 was 70, age you could get medicare was 65). In that capacity it is still *almost* capable but that would require changing the age at which you could get medicare to 72.

But you're suggesting we let people buy into it at a younger age. It's not politically or economically a viable solution. Let's assume that we just eat the cost of that half a million dollar loss, somehow, and ignore it for now. The average year requires about $10,000 worth of medical care for american adults and another $1250 for each child. So lets say a family of four signs up for your M4A option. Their tax burden is going to increase $22,500/ year. Just to pay for their health care. The median household (husband/wife) income in the US is $60,000. That's your middle class income.

Now, they're already spending that $22,500 a year, right? So it shouldn't matter if they pay it to dr's and insurance companies or to the government, right? Yes and no. First the government is almost never more efficient at what it does than private companies are, outside of the primal mandates of security and law enforcement.

Second we get into who would sign up for M4A? Are the rich, who are paying much more for much better care going to hop on board? Of course not. Are middle class families going to hop on? Maybe some, at least for a while. So that leaves the poor and the uninsurable. Can the poor afford $22,500 a year in insurance? lol, no, they don't spend that now, but they would expect that kind of care, wouldn't they? Are the uninsurable going to only cost that 22,500 a year? Nope, that's why they're uninsurable, they're too costly. So we have people who can't afford their own care and people who cost way more than the amount you could collect from them.

So how do you subsidize the people who can't afford it? Well you can't without forcing people who can afford it to pay for it. A medicare for all option does not allow for this.

How do you collect more from the uninsurable to cover their costs? You can't, equal treatment under the law would require everyone to be charged the same amount or the same percentage (if you get into percentages it doesn't help your argument, you still need the dollars to pay the doctors, from somewhere).

So what you end up with in an M4A option is terrible care for more than it's worth. Just like how real medicare was originally intended to work. Collect a bunch and hope they die.

This is the problem with accepting the lefts emotional argument that medical care is a right. It is not. You do not have a right to anyone else's time/money/resources. You have to pay for your own medical care. You're not going to rub it off on someone else and have everything magically work out. It costs what it costs. Like it or not, there is a economic value to each and every person and it is intrinsically tied to their worth to those around them in the world. Platitudes that life is worth an infinite amount are nothing but left wing dogma. You stay alive as long as you can afford to. Fortunately people today are able to afford to stay alive much longer than they were 60 years ago.