IT'S TIME FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

FreeDuck wrote:

But the thing that I like about the Medicare for all idea is that it allows those of us who don't require a lot of care to pay into it, which I hope would then mean that would be properly funded and could afford to pay doctors fairly.

Well, if "allows" kind of means "requires", that would at least get every one into one insurance pool. I think we have some agreement on insurance companies who drop policies on sick people, and those who either deny coverage, or price coverage out of the market for people with pre-existing conditions. It also leaves benefits and treatments in the hands of a single entity, which has cost control as one objective. Possibly, you have more faith in that entity than I, especially when there is pressure to control budgets.

CBO: A Strong Public Plan Saves Lots of Money

According to Congress Daily, the CBO says attaching the public plan to Medicare rates will save even more money than originally thought:

In a bid to wrangle concessions from the Blue Dog Coalition on healthcare reform, House leaders Thursday released CBO estimates for liberals' preferred version of the public option that show $85 billion more in savings than for the version the Blue Dogs prefer.

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., a Blue Dog co-chair, said any possible new momentum toward a public option tethered to Medicare rates is, in part, "because of the cost issue" and the updated CBO score.

The original House bill required the public plan to pay providers 5 percent more than Medicare reimbursement rates. But as part of a package of concessions to Blue Dogs, the House Energy and Commerce Committee accepted an amendment that requires the HHS Secretary to negotiate rates with providers. That version of the plan will save only $25 billion.

In total, a public plan based on Medicare rates would save $110 billion over 10 years. That is $20 billion more than earlier estimates, a spokesman for House Speaker Pelosi said.

In other words, the conservatives want to spend $85 billion more than the liberals do. Moreover, the CBO is estimating savings to the government. That is to say, the $85 billion reflects reduced federal spending on subsidies because premiums in the public plan will be lower. Savings to individuals and businesses paying lower premiums will be much larger than $85 billion, and politically, much more important.

Meanwhile, a new New York Times poll shows that the public option is still a good 20 percent more popular than health-care reform in general.

I read the link. It, of course, merely reflects the opinions of the supporters of the public option in the House. It isn't clear what is being compared here. The CBO hasn't yet scored the costs associated with the draft Senate Bill that appears to be the only current alternative to the original House plan that did contain a public option. What then is the basis for the asserted savings?

Furthermore only a rather thoughtless or naive reader would assume that the real costs of such a program will turn out to be anything close to what the political advocates (and the CBO scorekeepers) assert about the program.

The reason is simple - there is still a free marketplace out there, and while the government can specify what it will pay, those who provide the services will still determine what they will provide in return and in what numbers they will participate. In addition the government's track record for forecasting the real costs of entitlement programs is so far nothing to brag about. There is no reason to suppose these forecasts will turn out to be any more realistic than those that have preceeded them - all have fallen far short of actual costs.

The biggest problem I see with Medicare is the simple fact that when congress established the system and subsequent tax rates at a time when our demographics were changing, they didn't make the necessary adjustments in taxes, and age for qualification while adding others to the benefit such as the handicapped. They needed to increase the tax rates in addition to increasing the age to qualify for Medicare. Without these adjustments, the trust fund will not sustain the increased numbers who qualify at much higher cost to the system. They also have not made much effort in the area of waste and fraud. . . .

Congress then spent the funds for other programs/purposes rather than preserving those tax dollars for the purpose in which they were intended. In other words, Congress robbed our future to pay for the excesses of the present.

By exploiting and depleting our old age pension and medical care funds, Congress could give huge tax breaks and other means of legislative largess to corporations. The corporations "bought" our congressional representatives. Our senators and congressmen do not work for the people--they work for the corporations that make them rich and fund their campaigns.

The Social Security Trust Fund is the means by which the federal government of the United States accounts for excess paid-in contributions from workers and employers to the Social Security system that are not required to fund current benefit payments to retirees, survivors, and the disabled or to pay administrative expenses. More importantly, the trust fund also contains the securities that will be redeemed to make benefit payments in the future when contributions derived from payroll taxes and self-employment contributions no longer are sufficient to fully fund then-current benefit payments. (The controversy over its meaningfulness is a topic of the sustainability of the unified Federal budget.) Paid-in contributions that exceed the amount required to fully fund current payments to beneficiaries are invested in securities issued by the federal government. The securities issued under this scheme constitute the assets of the Social Security Trust Fund. Because under current federal law these securities represent future obligations that must be repaid, the federal government includes these securities within the overall national debt.[1] The portion of the national debt that is not considered "publicly held" represents the obligations incurred by the government to itself, the bulk of which consists of the government's obligations to the Social Security Trust Fund.

The gross absurdity of this situation is that we are now asked, by the same political forces that created this mess, to believe that extending their reach to include all health care will somehow "solve" the financial crisis that they themselves created, and even more astounding, that they -who have never done so before - will somehow end fraud and abuse, and do so without any of the harsh actions required in all other areas of human activity.

single payer - public or private

unbounded cost which has the potential to wreck the economy