“The system we have, the status quo is not acceptable,” Porter told me when I covered her primary race in May. “We’re questioning whether we can rely on major players, like health insurance companies, to continue to be reliable partners in delivering health care.” Source https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/2/17468448/medicare-for-all-single-payer-health-care-2018-elections
Since when did insurance companies deliver health care? And there you have the essence of the problem. We argue about and complain about what we don’t understand or have any common understanding about.
Does Medicare deliver health care? It’s supposed to pay for health care and manage costs and certainly it applies rules and regulations and reporting requirements by the truck load. How is that different than other insurance?
If you question the ambiguity that surrounds the understanding of Medicare-for-all, here’s is a good example that substantiates that. Did you think there was a difference between a national health plan, universal health coverage and Medicare-for-all? Apparently many people do?
What exactly do people want from a health care system?
In short, everything. They want unlimited access to care, they want minimum or no out-of-pocket costs, they want it to be affordable and they don’t want any interference between the doctor and patient by a third-party.
I have news for you, not only can’t people actually define what all that means, there is no system in the world that delivers it all either. Time to get realistic.
Let’s define what we want, what we don’t want, what we can afford and what changes in the way we receive health care we are willing to accept.
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Categories: Medicare
I think few people might understand this if you switch to “Free Food for All”. Why should I pay taxes for someone who wants nothing but organic food? Why are they only us offering junk food? Why can’t I just go to a supermarket and take what I want. Better yet, make people offer up any food they have in their own house to anybody who wants it, free with the end result of not having any money to go and buy more food. Price controls usually results in rationing, shortages, or riots. Just look at Haiti this week. Medicine and healthcare is still just like commodity in limited supply and somebody has to pay.
Now if the government want to affect the cost of doctors in healthcare system all they would have to do is flood the market by offering free student loans to those who actually graduated as MDs and as a condition of the free loans they must practice where the government tells them to practice. The government should own the patents for all the research that they fund not the colleges to aid in keeping the drug pricing low. I can’t think of a worse way to screw up our system of medical care other than Medicare for All.
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