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.