We have a shortcoming of funding in Medicare. Obviously. Of course we have a shortcoming in Medicare funding…it’s a health insurance system that, instead of only ripping people off by insuring only healthy people like the private insurance companies, it only insures people who are elderly and probably have more health problems.
And there are a lot of people who can’t get health care in this country, whether it’s due to a pre-existing condition or whether it is due to an inability to budget monthly premiums. Check. As a result, when these people get sick or hurt and go to the emergency room, they can’t pay for it. Who does? The taxpayers pay for it. That’s a problem. Considering health care costs take up 1/6th of the entire US Government budget, it’s a huge problem.
Fix both at once. Pass Medicare for everyone. A baseline health care system that ensures everyone in the country is paying into a system. Kids under the age of 21 are free…after all, this is a system that may even more than pay for itself. Why? Simply because there are more people in this country between the ages of 21 and 45 than there are 46 to 75 (or so). A lot more. So much so that the insurance companies would be making a load of cash even if they weren’t dropping sick people off their premiums after those people paid into those plans. And they have. Which kind of throws the entire purpose of health care…out the window. It’s not working if that is happening. It’s broken. It has to be fixed.
To discourage frivolous hospital visits, all you need is a 100 dollar copay. Most people can pay 100 bucks. It’s like a traffic ticket. It hurts, but you can do it. You can have an exemption in there for economic hardship for those who can’t. Most people wouldn’t abuse their hospital waiting room that much anyway…because we have to work to pay our rent and to live in this country, and you can’t just take an afternoon off every time you get a paper cut or tweaked elbow playing tennis.
You have Medicare capable of paying catastrophic, necessary, and preventative treatments. Elective surgery will still be paid out of pocket.
In Canada, all those people pay about 50 bucks a month in taxes for their health care system, and they have fewer people. The thing about the insurance business is that the more people you have paying in, the bigger the pool of cash you can potentially create. So by that logic, potentially, with proper regulations in place, you can have a Medicare based universal coverage system that actually MAKES money. You think insurance companies aren’t making money? What, you think they pay their CEOs 20 million dollar salaries for nothing? Why they always hire a zillion more people than they need to sell health insurance in regions where they have a state government ordained monopoly on service? Spend millions of your health care premium dollars on “investing” in politicians to keep their monopolies going? They’re making a LOAD of cash.
Look. If it’s just a state program, you don’t need to hire people to sell it. And if you’re laying those people off…they’re salespeople. Think about it. If you’re a small to medium sized business and you’re suddenly saving 4 grand for each of your employees, what are you going to do with that money? You’re going to hire a salesperson to help sell your product. There’ll be some available, unless they were so stupid as to think they could only sell insurance. That’s a whole lot MORE jobs than you’ll lose by having some big insurance companies downsize, rebrand as supplemental/comprehensive insurance providers.
There you go. There’s a system that anyone can understand and get behind. It’s fiscal, it covers everyone, it will probably make a lot of jobs by saving every business (other than health insurance providers) huge money, and it’ll make doctors happy because they only have to deal with one agency that isn’t trying to scam everyone. It’ll take some money out of politics, too. Everyone wins all around. You solve the health care crisis in this country AND you shore up the Medicare system for good.