Medicare for all? Are you sure?

“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.