Medicare for All - For everyone Posted: Sep 23rd, 2017 - 7:21 am
From a Friend ---
Ok, here’s my rant about healthcare and Medicare for all. A bit of background. I have been on Medicare in the past due to kidney failure. So I know what it’s like to have insurance, be kicked off insurance, have Medicare, Medicaid and back onto insurance again.
One selling point that the GOP is trying to make right now is that under Obama Care the healthy are paying to insure the unhealthy. Why buy insurance if you’re healthy? For the same reason you buy insurance for your car, even though none of you have any intention of getting into a car wreck. For the same reason you have home owners insurance even though you have no intention of having a house fire. Young people not getting insurance, then breaking a leg or needing an expensive surgery and not being able to pay for it actually cause our healthcare prices to go up the same as old people who can’t afford insurance. Their inability to pay is passed onto the consumer.
Obamacare was not perfect. It was a watered down law, but it did get people insured, yet premiums went up anyways. Medicare pays 80% coverage. They also sell supplemental insurance that can help with the remainder of the copays and ensure you a private room. And I never had any trouble getting any doctor or hospital to accept Medicare. So the scare tactic that you won’t have any choice in doctors is a farce.
But for my conservative friends, who I know are already shaking their heads no to this, consider this fact. You and I and the rest of America are subsidizing low cost medication in other countries. Yep. Example. Folks in Canada pay a fraction of what we do for their medications. Medications that are made RIGHT HERE IN THE GOOD OLE U.S.A! Now, how do you think those drug manufacturers make up their profit margins? By passing the cost of lower drug prices in Canada on to United States consumers. So if you want to keep helping to provide low cost meds to the industrialized countries that have single payer systems then by all means, let’s keep our glorious system intact! America First! (except when it comes to costing big pharma any profit). All that R&D that they claim they need the high prices for, paid by the USA. Not Canada, or Great Britain, or Australia where these drugs that are made here are sold!
I mentioned earlier that you could buy supplemental insurance for Medicare, which many seniors do right now. I did myself when I was on Medicare. I would think that if the entire country did this then the insurance companies would make more money in bulk, low priced supplemental policies than by the high priced ones they peddle now because more people would be insured.
Also, Medicare for all would alleviate a lot of burden from businesses, that either are mandated now to provide insurance under the law passed with Obamacare, or providing insurance as part of the perks to work for them. Also healthier employees tend to be happier employees.
I know I have advocated before about selling insurance across state lines and in the short term that could bring prices down. But eventually the insurance companies will collude and get those premium prices back up. And then we’re right back to square one with people not being able to afford the premiums.
But what scares me most is the Pre-Existing conditions. The current plan the GOP is pushing will get rid of those protections. The politicians say “We’re giving the states the ability to make the decisions here for their people”. Guess what? The cuts to funding they are proposing will all but guarantee those states put in for the waivers for Pre-existing conditions because their plans will only be affordable for everyone else unless they do. This will price people with those conditions out of the insurance market.
Why is it that other countries are willing to pool their resources for the health of their people but not America? What is so inherently wrong about that? After I had my transplant I had to find a job that would insure me because Medicare will only cover a person post-transplant for 3 years. At $30,000 a year initially I couldn’t afford that without insurance. The only work that I could find that didn’t have a pre-existing conditions clause on their insurance was government jobs. I put in 200 applications for the state of Ohio and another 162 Federal job applications. I finally found a job, but I ended up 684 miles away from all of my family and friends, alone.
If Congress and the federal government don’t have to worry about pre-existing conditions then why does the rest of America? Because the government has bargaining power with the insurance companies. And many a politician accepts money from those companies in the form of campaign contributions. They’ve negotiated themselves a sweet deal but balk when it comes to the rest of America? And many of you are cheering for what they’re doing right now?
Listen, neither you nor I nor the politicians can look at this from a party line point of view. It’s about time we join the rest of the industrialized world when it comes to healthcare. We as a people need to start demanding better. And if you’re young and healthy right now, well good for you! But it won’t last forever. Eventually you will get sick, or injured and you’ll be stuck with some big time medical bills. Given you’re probably already saddled with student loans I’d think you wouldn’t want to be saddled with medical bills too.
Well that’s my rant. Let the hating commence from the right side of the room in an orderly fashion please. No shoving, there’s plenty of me to go around!
From a Friend
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