Thanks for the thread, Skwmom.

And if even DU can't take a serious look at Medicare For All, it should be pretty obvious why it's going nowhere.

Currently private insurance takes in about $960 billion in premiums per year and pays out about $845 billion in benefits.

Medicare, meanwhile, pays out about $580 billion in benefits (its premium model is different enough that there's no sense comparing), while Medicaid and CHIP paid about $460 billion in benefits.

Currently 13% of Americans have no health insurance, 16% have Medicare, 16% have Medicaid, and 54% have private health insurance (that doesn't quite add up to 100% because there are still other categories, eg the VA, CHIP, the military, prisons, etc.).

If the 54% with private health insurance were on Medicare, there would be an initial $105 billion per year in savings from the overhead, and an additional $100 billion per year savings in lower provider costs (assuming Medicare could keep its current costs from rising on a nationwide model, which may not be true). So we're at a $205 billion per year savings now.

Now, the thing is, if the 13% of Americans with no health insurance start using Medicare at the same rate as currently-insured people (which frankly is optimistic), that means that's an additional $223 billion per year in treatment costs, and that's under the most optimistic conceivable model.

It gets worse: Kaiser estimates that 14% of insured Americans never use their insurance, because they can't afford the copays/deductibles. If they start using Medicare (though see below; it also has copays and deductibles) then we have an additional $104 billion in benefits being paid, for a total of $327 billion added benefits vs. $205 billion dollars saved.

Anyone who thinks Medicare for all will save money is being absolutely blind to the level of under-treatment the poor in America face.

Now, it still gets worse:

Medicare Part A has a $1260 deductible and a $407 monthly premium (if you worked for X years and paid Medicare levies, this premium is paid out of the Trust Fund). If we go to Medicare For All, the Trust Fund can't pay for current workers' premiums. So that's a $407/month flat deduction from every paycheck simply to keep the program as funded today.

Medicare Part B has a $147 per month premium, for a total monthly flat cost of $554 for every man, woman, and child in the country per month, and it only offers 80% coinsurance; you still have to pay 20% of your bill.

The level of coverage Medicare offers is worse than a Bronze ACA plan, and wouldn't help poor Americans much at all.

Literally no country except Canada has found a way to make a Single Payer system work (Taiwan is closest, but it has fees at delivery). I don't think it's the right answer for us, any more than it is for France, Germany, or the UK.

We need to limit costs. I can't see any other way around it. We need a medical board like in Germany or France that simply sets how much a doctor or drug company or device manufacturer is allowed to charge for something.

I side with Reich.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/32447-focus-the-wall-street-journals-18-trillion-dollar-lie-about-bernie

You say nothing about the current costs of treating the uninsured because they never had preventive care.

You can put in safeguards to drastically reduce medicare abuse.

Medicare for all does NOT have to be structured exactly like the current medicare.

Every year more large corporations are opting for self insurance because of the skyrocketing premium costs which will further drive up premiums, deductibles etc for the remaining populace that actually pays premiums.

And yes, we can afford it.