Search
Recent Posts
- ChangingAging.org Redesign -- Please Bookmark!
- Disaster in Buffalo
- Power Up Friday
- Blanchard WinsDays
- Kevin Frick writes...
- Monkhouse Monday
- Getting Closer!
- Blanchard WinsDays
- Power Up Friday
- My Pick for Health and Human Services
- Understanding Health Care Reform
- Facts Are Stubborn Things: Social Security Edition
- Monkhouse Monday
- Localism is Coming
- Krugman Can't Wait...
Recent Comments
Category Archives
- AGING 100
- Aging
- Culture
- Dementia
- Eden Alternative
- Erickson School
- Green House
- Health Policy
- Longevity
- Media
- Rockets
Monthly Archives
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
Subscribe to this blog's feed
Announcements

Blog Data
« Growing Up is Hard to Do | Main | Monkhouse Monday: Thinking Differently »
January 26, 2009 |Permalink |Comments (0)
Medicare for Everyone
From a Yahoo Question Board...
So why wouldn't Medicare for everyone work? Facts please - not diatribes of hate and fear.?
So tell me in logical plain English, why having everyone in Medicare instead of a thousand for profit private insurance plans would not work. Please give logical, factual answers, and not the crap that the talking heads on the right and left spew.
My Dad who is turning 80 is in very good health for his age. And yet when he tried to get supplemental coverage to go along with his Medicare, the lowest quote was for almost $5000 a year, with Medicare picking up 80% of the tab and the supplemental insurer only paying 20%. Logically, if they had to pay 100% of the costs after copays, they would be charging $20,000+ for the policy.My private insurance is $12000 a year for a family of 4 on a
group policy that covers 5000 employees and their families.
It covered 100% of all expenses after copays for Rx.
Medicare paid $7200 / person last year to cover old and sick people. Private insurance paid $6800 / person to cover young healthy people.
The thing to understand is that there is too much money in the healthcare system in the United States. In fact, there is so much money (we spend more on health care per capita than any other country) that large for-profit corporations work round-the-clock to persuade policy makers that health care consists of "goods and services" and should not be understood as somethings that Americans have a right to receive.
Offering Medicare to everyone would save the nation trillions of dollars over the coming decades and bring us into line with the practice of other industrial economies.