"Dear President Obama: A Modest Medicare Proposal" by Thom Hartmann

Published on The Smirking Chimp (http://www.smirkingchimp.com)
Dear President Obama: A Modest Medicare Proposal
By Thom Hartmann
Created Aug 17 2009 - 9:03am

Dear President Obama,

I understand you're thinking of dumping your "public option" because of all the demagoguery by Sarah Palin and Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich and their crowd on right-wing radio and Fox. Fine. Good idea, in fact.

Instead, let's make it simple. Please let us buy into Medicare.

It would be so easy. You don't have to reinvent the wheel with this so-called "public option" that's a whole new program from the ground up. Medicare already exists. It works. Some people will like it, others won't - just like the Post Office versus FedEx analogy you're so comfortable with.

Just pass a simple bill - it could probably be just a few lines, like when Medicare was expanded to include disabled people - that says that any American citizen can buy into the program at a rate to be set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which reflects the actual cost for us to buy into it.

So it's revenue neutral!

To make it available to people of low income, raise the rates slightly for all currently non-eligible people (like me - under 65) to cover the cost of below-200%-of-poverty people. Revenue neutral again.

Most of us will do damn near anything to get out from under the thumbs of the multi-millionaire CEOs who are running our current insurance programs. Sign me up!

This lets you blow up all the rumors about death panels and grandma and everything else: everybody knows what Medicare is. Those who scorn it can go with Blue Cross. Those who like it can buy into it. Simplicity itself.

Of course, we'd like a few fixes, like letting Medicare negotiate drug prices and filling some of the holes Republicans and AARP and the big insurance lobbyists have drilled into Medicare so people have to buy "supplemental" insurance, but that can wait for the second round. Let's get this done first.

Simple stuff. Medicare for anybody who wants it. Private health insurance for those who don't. Easy message. Even Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley can understand it. Sarah Palin can buy into it, or ignore it. No death panels, no granny plugs, nothing. Just a few sentences.

Replace the "you must be disabled or 65" with "here's what it'll cost if you want to buy in, and here's the sliding scale of subsidies we'll give you if you're poor, paid for by everybody else who's buying in." (You could roll back the Reagan tax cuts and make it all free, but that's another rant.)

We elected you because we expected you to have the courage of your convictions. Here's how. Not the "single payer Medicare for all" that many of us would prefer, but a simple, "Medicare for anybody who wants to buy in."

Respectfully,
Thom Hartmann
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6313387&mesg_id=6313387

Though, Thom gave it much more thought than I did of course. I love his idea about revenue neutrality!

:toast:

...just to keep from giving money to the corporate vultures who are getting my insurance premiums now. I'd be pleased to pay into a plan like Medicare.

The insurance companies will fight a plan like this to their last ill-gotten dollar.

They'd find another way to scare old people with the 'rationing' thing but Hartmann's revenue neutral suggestion should nip that in the bud.

Heard Thom talking about this proposal of his on today's show. Forgot to K&R when he first issued it.

I want Medicare for All who choose it as our public option.

I am angry to hear all the talk about how it must be revenue neutral because I didn't hear Congress pushing the revenue neutrality of the Bush-Cheney wars.

We have a public health emergency engendered by a private sector that failed miserably to prove that it could do better. Time and time again.

I'd love to trade in the few hundred a month I pay now to get a very high deductible in case I meet with an accident, for a plan that allows me to actually go see a doctor before a dire emergency arises.