have to buy insurance, pay for copays, deductibles, and dental.

for Medicare For All, who having been making this point as long as they have been advocating for it.

Maybe there is some reson why that message is not being broadcast?

But the media makes enormous revenue on insurance company ads, so they are loath to do anything to interrupt that cash flow, the same as political ads.

a premium dollar? Hint, it’s nowhere near 20%.

Point is, I’m for universal coverage and Medicare-for-All is one way to do that. But the whole healthcare system will have to be restructured to make it affordable. As long as we pay a lot more to those in healthcare than other countries, it’s going to be tough.

Know any nurses, radiology techs, etc. How do you think the are going to take a 40% to 50% pay cut to be comparable to nurses in the UK, etc. What will the unions say? And, we haven’t even started talking about doctors, stand up MRI facilities for claustrophobic American consumers, private hospital rooms that most people demand, etc. oh, I’m fine with cutting CEO pay. Heck, eliminate it for all I care. That’ll save us 0.0000538%.

I want to hear a politician tell the truth on what it will cost us to get Medicare-for-All, and then commit to do that, the hell with what it costs. I’ll vote for them, but I’m betting any politician who does that won’t make the first cut in the primaries.

to see the beautiful cars the doctors are driving. Fact is the competition to get into medical school in canada is very, very high because it is a calling.

nurses made then if they work at a hospital. I walked around the hospital a few times. I can't remember if I was taking my parents there or when I was there myself. Again, jaguars and other fine cars. This was one of three big hospitals in Ottawa. There are no private hospitals. This was a public hospital. Not in a rich area. Very pleasant place. My dad was very sick this fall and ended up in another hospital for a few days. Lovely service. The best computer technology to monitor him. He was out in three days. He is almost 89 and weighs 270. Health care is wonderful here. He is in a nursing home and the doctor there got us to stop him from eating too much sugar and his levels have gone down to healthy.

insurance companies pay.

So we get rid of insurance companies and your premium goes down 6% a month — from say $700 to $658 a month. That’s an improvement for sure and worth doing. But I’m betting people are going to gripe just as much paying $658 as they do paying $700.

Point is not that’s it isn’t worth pursuing, but there is so many more things we are going to have to do, including sacrifices, to make the system truly affordable.

Of course, I’m not even considering how the government will come up with money for the systems and employees that insurance companies supply now to administer Medicare, Medicaid, etc., the money necessary to cover the 30 million that don’t have coverage, and more. With the will we can achieve a lot in 20 or 30 years, but we aren’t going to see any real savings in my lifetime. We’re fooling ourselves.

On the other hand, no better time to start than now, if we find someone to do it who isn’t playing politics with healthcare. Hillary Clinton came pretty close in 1990s, but she was crucified by both sides.

about 20 - 30% of our costs. Medicare administrator is 2%.

Medicare budget.

I’ve been for Medicare-for-All, actually Medicaid, since 1982. But, getting there is going to be painful and take quite awhile unless government ponies up a bunch of money upfront. Don’t see it happening with GOPer in control, or close to control.

and move the discussion to what is best for all those who want affordable quality healthcare. It will probably not work to advocate moving everyone onto Medicare or Medicaid rolls. The enemy will paint it as "they are taking away your wonderful insurance!" It must be a choice. Even at a public option buy in there will be push back. They will say: "The quality will be poor". At the same time they will say: "This is unfair competition on the part of the government insurance." You can't have it both ways. Either Medicare is bad-- in which case people will not want it. Or.....Medicare is better and more affordable and this is the best for YOU. Who cares about the effing Insurance Companies. If they can't offer an affordable product then they must GO OUT OF BUSINESS! The important thing is to provide YOU with quality affordable healthcare. This is not a game.

The Democratic Party must have a clear strategy to pay for the insurance.

Medicare for all is the pro-business plan if you think about how it benefits the companies and organizations paying for their workers' health insurance

to make up for the loss of the much better paying commercial plans.

What Medicare for All consistently fails to account for is the fact that many providers accept Medicare and Medicaid patients ONLY because they have at least some commercial patients whose payments can subsidize the losses or razor thin margins of the government payers. You suddenly make those providers rely SOLELY on those anemic government payments and easily half are out of business in a year. You'd be handing the neocons those "wait lists" on silver platter.

Medicare for All? Absolutely.

Medicare for All with absolutely no plan for how to make the payment rates sustainable for the majority of providers? No thanks.

we start subsidizing our best and brightest to become docs so they don't start their careers with huge debt

tax credits for providers

Plus, whenever people get old/sick/disabled they tend to go on Medicare either through age or disability meaning that all the sick people are already on Medicare and the privates get to cherry pick healthy workers and suck up their premiums while giving them nothing.

If people had Medicare from an early age--i.e. insurance they could afford to use that emphasized disease prevention--Medicare would not spend so much money paying for end of life care for people with dialysis, transplants, heart failure--because fewer of us would need dialysis, transplants and heart failure. Sadly, the Medical Industrial Complex likes all these severe chronic disease, because they make a bundle treating them.

not discussing matters of common interest. For shame.