for individuals, starting with employer based insurance premiums, co-payments, deductibles, and the general wtf surprise its out of network payments.

Unless you like paying for all that shit and can't do simple math.

No one has scored to that level of detail.

that is the total you spend on premiums, deductibles, co-pays, uncovered nonsense like 'oops its out of network' etc. So you can start there. That does not include the employer costs.

MFA would have to struggle to reach those levels. Perhaps the bill could be amended to add private rooms and cosmetic surgery.

Prescription drug coverage, catastrophic coverage etc can be more.

Do the math: under MFA, a family of 4 would have a monthly premium of at least $540. Try selling that to an employee whose family insurance is currently paid in full or in large part by their employer. Not bad if you make six figures, but how does that work for a young family of four earning under $50,000?

In addition, the current FICA payroll deduction on 100% of workers generates only enough revenue to cover current seniors on Medicare, and people on DI insurance or Medicaid, roughly 20% of the population. To now cover 100% of the population under MFA, that payroll deduction would need to increase five-fold.

It ain’t free.

The proposal is a complete replacement of Medicare. There are no premiums. No copays. No deductibles. The only exception is prescriptions, and your out of pocket costs there are limited, in the senate bill to $200.

doesn’t mean the costs don’t exist, or that we won’t be paying through the nose to cover the costs.

Pie in the sky bullshit. Ds are better than that.

same error Bill and Hillary made. I am completely against it period...a public option and reform of the ACA.

insurance providers to something less generous?

Medicare for All frees the people from that uncertainty.

And as far as getting fired or other contingencies, I've yet to hear a Medicare for All explain why a public option won't take care of that.

them now. My insurance is great and cost 329.00 per month for our family. There are millions who like their insurance as do I. So what about families...do we buy it separately...very expensive. insure those who need it with a public option. Eventually, universal health care.

I could understand people liking their doctor, nurse or hospital but why would anyone like their for profit "health" insurance when it not only contributes nothing to actual healthcare but takes away from it?

Medicare for All is superior to and will replace Medicare and as proposed has no deductibles, co-pays or premiums.

My husband will have a second spine operation ...all told over $300,000 at Cleveland clinic on Thursday. Our out of pocket will be $3000. Plenty of people have good work place insurance. Try taking it away if you want to lose in 20. I want universal health care. We can do that with a system like the ones in Germany or Frances we can use the ACA to end up there. Medicare for all or any large governmental system's time has come and gone. Medicare and Medicaid can be rolled into universal health fairly easily.

I haven't read any in depth proposals about a public option. I've heard different proposals about what a public option might look like, from a medicare buy in to a new governmental agency.

In most cases I've seen, it would be available to employers and individuals. So not being tied to an employer depends on how generous that employer would be with Medicare+.

If we roll up medicare/medicaid into a universal health care system, we have to have a universal system to start with. A public option is not universal health care.

The large health care systems in the rest of the first world seem to be working fine. Well except where conservatives have fucked with it.

Even if we copy the German system of private insurers, won't we have a large govenmental agency?

that would be true free agency.

and suicidal for us politically. I don't believe there will be no deductibes or premiums . Also no way this gets through the Senate. And taxes will be huge...I have to pay them ...now my employer subsidizes my insurance. Why is that better? Even if there are subsidies, they will be paid by us. And I doubt SCOTUS will find aspects of this program constitutional. It is lose lose in my opinion. It won't become law and could cost us 2020.

Which would end it...and we would be tossed out of office.

Insurance on the plan...Hillarycare. the same would happen now. Did you really think Sanders invented single payer...been around for years.

guaranteeing that it will pass and be signed by President Sanders.


Bernie & Elizabeth 2020!!!
Welcome to the revolution!!!

That is unpopular and could cost us 2020. It also helps the GOP attempts to destroy the only healthcare we have- the ACA-by giving SCOTUS cover to rule against us. I sincerely don't understand how Sanders could do this now with millions of lives at stake. It could be years before new care became available. How many would die? I consider this irresponsible and heartless.

I stand with the innocent uninsured people of this country, not with the greedy healthcare insurance corporations profiting off their illicit gains. Sorry, but I refuse to defend that corporate scum!!


Bernie & Elizabeth 2020!!!
Welcome to the revolution!!!

MFA is years away if it ever happens. And I doubt it will.

I love Obamacare. It would be even better with a robust public option (hmmm... how about Medicare?) and more generous subsidies to the middle class.

It took us so long to get something like universal access to insurance. It will take a long time to get to the system as outlined in the Vox article. We are making progress, though.

Thanks for the thread applegrove.

in Sweden, and they don't have a massive defense establishment to support.

US population 327 million.

The Swedish population is healthier which in turn cuts down on overall cost. We are not a physically healthy country.

For example, if we were to spend $300 billion a year on health insurance, it would cost everyone only $1000 a year. If we make the taxes progressive, it would could the average person even less.

Health care costs in the US in 2018 were $3.65 trillion. Unless you believe we can administer health care for 1/12th of the current cost, your math is substantially off. At $3.65 trillion and 140 million taxpayers, it's $26k per taxpayer and more than $11k per person.

http://fortune.com/2019/02/21/us-health-care-costs-2/

Last edited Fri Apr 12, 2019, 11:04 AM - Edit history (1)

Having a population loaded with unhealthy people doesn’t make healthcare cheaper and simply having more of them doesn’t do that either. I’m not opposed to any of this but we have to not bullshit ourselves about the realities of it.

Not a fan.

Since the end of the Cold War, we've had two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and few cared about the costs.

My point is this. If we can have all the wars we want and all the tax cuts we want, we can afford single payer health care.

We're Democrats, not accountants. We cannot ask people to take time out of their lives to stand in line to vote for balancing the budget.

We can't give women the vote. And for God's sake, we cannot allow Gay people to marry. If we do that, we'd lose every election.

sarcasm off.

If we don't think big, dream big, and give people something tangible to vote for, we won't only lose to Trump, but we'll continue to lose every other Republican down the road.

Sanders wants his plan it seems and damn the consequences. Medicare for all is not popular. It simply won't happen and the consequences for us are horrific ...Trump could be reelected on the mantra...taking away healthcare. Now That would be ironic.

This election is about more than beating Trump, much, much more. Sure, we can eek out a win by being centrist, middle of the road, but guess what another, even worse than Trump will emerge. We never thought that they would do worse than W., but they sure as hell fucking did.

What are we going to do with a worse than Trump Republican nominee? The only way to stop that from happening is to propose and enact solutions that improve everyone's lives directly. Incrementalism is dead.

only plan we have or may ever have as helping anyone. And if a plan is unpopular don't run on it.

You keep focusing on what can/cannot be passed. Instead you should focus on big, bold ideas and build a constituency around them.

The revolution means no rules.

That's the number of people that did not vote in 2016. Out of 237 million eligible voters, 100 million did not vote. That's the pool that we should target. We cannot get those people to vote on incremental changes to the ACA.

Allowing a buy in by people over 60, then 55, and so on. This would allow the infrastructure of Medicare to expand in a controllable way. It would also of course lead to Medicare for all and billions in possible savings.

But until we get there, we can't be seen as Trump, promising great healthcare without a workable plan. Our first step should be to shore up and expand the ACA and then start working toward single payer.

But our ultimate goal has to be single payer in some form.

The Medicare for All legislation unveiled Wednesday by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state, was written with the help of a broad swath of lobbyists and special interest groups, if perhaps not the kind associated with typical health policy legislation on Capitol Hill.

The key outside groups involved in the drafting included nurses, doctors, disability rights activists, and advocates for the elderly, as well as public interest organizations such as Public Citizen and the Center for Popular Democracy.

K&R