Why Seniors Should Be The Strongest Supporters Of Medicare For All

[StillwaterTownie]

Heck, old people on Medicare are certainly among those most vehemently opposed to Medicare For All.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nancya...YYwBPw9e3vcTQLF2hnauY4xJsBfGF-hQ#5b6db644b94c

 

[WillhamSouth]

People swimming in the municipal swimming pool should be the strongest supporters of the whole town jumping in with them.

 

[CocoCincinnati]

They already have it. They paid into it their entire lives and now the government wants to take all that money and give it to some 19 year old who's here illegally and never paid a penny into the system. Yeah, what's not to love about that. Never mind the rationing and death panels that will inevitably come from adding $50 Trillion to our budget (a conservative estimate to be sure), Yessiree bob, those seniors just aren't seeing the big picture.

Right now, you really kind of need supplemental insurance when you're on medicare...once the government gives it to everybody, you will absolutely, no doubt, without exception have to have it and it will be more expensive than it is now. Man, those seniors just aren't thinking this through.

 

[StillwaterTownie]

They already have it. They paid into it their entire lives and now the government wants to take all that money and give it to some 19 year old who's here illegally and never paid a penny into the system. Yeah, what's not to love about that. Never mind the rationing and death panels that will inevitably come from adding $50 Trillion to our budget (a conservative estimate to be sure), Yessiree bob, those seniors just aren't seeing the big picture.

Right now, you really kind of need supplemental insurance when you're on medicare...once the government gives it to everybody, you will absolutely, no doubt, without exception have to have it and it will be more expensive than it is now. Man, those seniors just aren't thinking this through.

Did you jakeman, ostater2319 and California Cowboy so much as read one word of the posted article?

 

[CaliforniaCowboy]

Did you jakeman, ostater2319 and California Cowboy so much as read one word of the posted article?

no, I had not read a word of it - because the subject line was way too radical and bizarre.

I did go back and read some of it (to placate you).... NEWSFLASH, Medicare coverage can be expanded to cover long term care and the other boo-hoo nonsense in that article WITHOUT implementing "Medicare for all".

Here's a thought... focus on fixing what needs fixing, and stop with the "comprehensive, fix even things that aren't broken approach".

we don't need or want "comprehensive" anything from the Federal Government.

 

[ksupoke]

Did you jakeman, ostater2319 and California Cowboy so much as read one word of the posted article?

I read it, the author (a gvt entitlements supporter as her bio clearly identifies) made some valid arguments about what needs fixed but ignores the elephant in the room. The gvt created this mess and the gvt cannot fix it, they can only make it more of a dependency in addition the cost of medical care has scarcely moved vs inflation for the last 30 yrs, (as I have previously posted in this forum, you can search for it if interested) roughly 90% of the increases in medical costs have nothing to do with health care they are gvt regulatory efforts that have benefited tpa’s and insurance companies while spawning multiple cottage industries.
Having maneuvered the path of Medicare for my parents for the better part of the last 8 years and having been faced with the prospect of long term disability with my son I am confident that, from a layman’s perspective, I understand it. You cannot fix it by expanding it, you fix it by eliminating it and either replacing it with nothing or replacing it with something that eliminates the gvt from the equation as well as rolling back the multitude of regulatory efforts that have overwhelmed our healthcare system. I would favor the former but could be convinced of the value of the latter.

 

[StillwaterTownie]

no, I had not read a word of it - because the subject line was way too radical and bizarre.

LOL, Medicare 4 All is far from radical and bizarre. The rest of the civilized world has it.

I gather you want all Medicare abolished so retired people can buy their own health insurance without subsidies from the government. If it costs a lot more because of their age, then that's just tough. They can't take their money and other assets with when they die.

 

[ksupoke]

LOL, Medicare 4 All is far from radical and bizarre. The rest of the civilized world has it.

I gather you want all Medicare abolished so retired people can buy their own health insurance without subsidies from the government. If it costs a lot more because of their age, then that's just tough. They can't take their money and other assets with when they die.

Townie, I know you’re a well meaning sort, I’m going to provide you a few charts, do with them what you will, I can’t control what you do with facts that are not just true but are contextually accurate, something not all facts are:

 

[ksupoke]

And here’s one more to drive home the point, please ask if you’re unclear of the point

 

[StillwaterTownie]

I brought up health care in other civilized countries, not ObamaCare. You would have done better showing charts how governments in other countries with universal health care have also been forcing health care costs there to skyrocket as much as the USA. If you can't do it, then the USA has something to learn from overseas about health care.

 

[CaliforniaCowboy]

LOL, Medicare 4 All is far from radical and bizarre. The rest of the civilized world has it.

I gather you want all Medicare abolished so retired people can buy their own health insurance without subsidies from the government. If it costs a lot more because of their age, then that's just tough. They can't take their money and other assets with when they die.

bad, bad, bad analogy. The "rest of the civilized world" does not have the US Constitution which is supposed to protect me from government intrusion like this.

WE ARE THE GREAT HUMAN EXPERIMENT, so stop comparing other failed countries to us. Please.

The United States is NOT LIKE other countries, it is more like the EU, and Great Briton is more like a State. Massachewshits has Romney care .... bully for them, they are a sovereign State.

Western Europe DOES NOT have EUcare for all... and never freaking will... THAT IS THE EQUIVALENT ANALOGY.

I already said what I want, you apparently don't read it and don't really care to understand what I'm saying - you only want to make allegations about what you want other people to do.

GO READ WHAT I WROTE - then get back to me about that, instead of making up stuff that I did not say just so you can throw a fit and pretend outrage

 

[StillwaterTownie]

bad, bad, bad analogy. The "rest of the civilized world" does not have the US Constitution which is supposed to protect me from government intrusion like this.

WE ARE THE GREAT HUMAN EXPERIMENT, so stop comparing other failed countries to us. Please.

The United States is NOT LIKE other countries, it is more like the EU, and Great Briton is more like a State. Massachewshits has Romney care .... bully for them, they are a sovereign State.

Western Europe DOES NOT have EUcare for all... and never freaking will... THAT IS THE EQUIVALENT ANALOGY.

I already said what I want, you apparently don't read it and don't really care to understand what I'm saying - you only want to make allegations about what you want other people to do.

GO READ WHAT I WROTE - then get back to me about that, instead of making up stuff that I did not say just so you can throw a fit and pretend outrage

Like it or not, well after 200 years the Constitution is a miserably failed experiment, because it sure didn't work to protect you from having deductions made from your paychecks for Social Security and Medicare. There is nothing wrong with learning a thing or two from other countries. I don't know of any of them wanting to adopt the USA way for health care.

You wrote: "Medicare coverage can be expanded to cover long term care and the other boo-hoo nonsense in that article WITHOUT implementing "Medicare for all". We don't need or want "comprehensive" anything from the Federal Government."

Then how do you expand Medicare coverage? Simply do what ksupoke implied and abolish most health care regulations as well as get the Feds out of it and let the states do it?

 

[docjoctoo]

I brought up health care in other civilized countries, not ObamaCare. You would have done better showing charts how governments in other countries with universal health care have also been forcing health care costs there to skyrocket as much as the USA. If you can't do it, then the USA has something to learn from overseas about health care.

Medicare is a failed government program that provides limited care for an excessively high price. The Medicare administrative costs are massive. For example, doctors spend two hours filling out paperwork to collect from Medicare for every hour they spend with a patient!

 

[StillwaterTownie]

Medicare is a failed government program that provides limited care for an excessively high price. The Medicare administrative costs are massive. For example, doctors spend two hours filling out paperwork to collect from Medicare for every hour they spend with a patient!

It could help to quit voting for candidates that accept money from Big Pharma and the rest of the health care related industry. Every winning vote in their favor tells them they must be doing something right. So they reject a plan to lower the cost of drugs Big Pharma naturally opposes and think they're doing something right. Yeah, for Big Pharma, but not for their voters needing drugs.

Trump should complain about the long paperwork of Medicare. But it seems he wants to be much more focused on immigration policies.

Using Medicare Advantage or other insurance such as vision insurance in large part makes up for what Medicare lacks.

Switching to Medicare Advantage For All might be acceptable to private health insurance companies, since they would be allowed to participate.

 

[ksupoke]

Like it or not, well after 200 years the Constitution is a miserably failed experiment, because it sure didn't work to protect you from having deductions made from your paychecks for Social Security and Medicare. There is nothing wrong with learning a thing or two from other countries. I don't know of any of them wanting to adopt the USA way for health care.

You wrote: "Medicare coverage can be expanded to cover long term care and the other boo-hoo nonsense in that article WITHOUT implementing "Medicare for all". We don't need or want "comprehensive" anything from the Federal Government."

Then how do you expand Medicare coverage? Simply do what ksupoke implied and abolish most health care regulations as well as get the Feds out of it and let the states do it?

Just to be clear I said remove gvt not the feds ie all gvt.
A rollback of most of the regulations would imperil no one and reduce the costs, it would then be up to the provider to reduce price. There are a number of ways to move ahead without expanding a failed system, here’s a simple one - allow for the intermingling of ira’s and hsa's that would mean that your co match would be both ira and hsa, obviously the devil is in the details but that’s one that is low hanging fruit, you can partially do this today but the limits are small and the effort is highly cumbersome, allow physicians and hospitals to compete on the open market just as an attorney is able to do allow them to advertise as aggressively as they desire and then hold them accountable for any type of misleading claim, again there are a number of ways to attack the issues but it requires changing the thought process of the consumer first.
Expanding Medicare is simply trying to glue a balsa wood rubber band powered plane back together, it never worked like it was supposed to, it broke the within the first 5 windups and now when you glue it it throws off the balance and it doesn’t even come close to what it’s claimed it will do.

BTW the point of the last chart was that the only health care price that has declined is the one with very limited insurance coverage, that’s not a coincidence.

 

[steross]

I read it, the author (a gvt entitlements supporter as her bio clearly identifies) made some valid arguments about what needs fixed but ignores the elephant in the room. The gvt created this mess and the gvt cannot fix it, they can only make it more of a dependency in addition the cost of medical care has scarcely moved vs inflation for the last 30 yrs, (as I have previously posted in this forum, you can search for it if interested) roughly 90% of the increases in medical costs have nothing to do with health care they are gvt regulatory efforts that have benefited tpa’s and insurance companies while spawning multiple cottage industries.
Having maneuvered the path of Medicare for my parents for the better part of the last 8 years and having been faced with the prospect of long term disability with my son I am confident that, from a layman’s perspective, I understand it. You cannot fix it by expanding it, you fix it by eliminating it and either replacing it with nothing or replacing it with something that eliminates the gvt from the equation as well as rolling back the multitude of regulatory efforts that have overwhelmed our healthcare system. I would favor the former but could be convinced of the value of the latter.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/policy-ten-administrators-for-every-one-us-doctor-092813#1

The Great Healthcare Bloat: 10 Administrators for Every 1 U.S. Doctor

A blogger for the Harvard Business Review recently crunched the numbers on healthcare employment and found something startling. From 1990 to 2012, the U.S. healthcare workforce grew by 75 percent. At a time when millions of Americans will soon enter the system under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), this seems like a welcome trend.

But there’s a catch. All but five percent of that job growth was in administrative staff, not doctors.

The ratio of doctors to other healthcare workers is now 1:16, up from 1:14 two decades ago. Of those 16 workers for every doctor, only six are involved in caring for patients—nurses and home health aids, for example. The other 10 are in purely administrative roles.


https://www.athenahealth.com/insight/expert-forum-rise-and-rise-healthcare-administrator
v

Healthcare as a business has fundamentally changed. It was a field dominated by small businesses in the 1970s — many physicians were solo practitioners with fairly minimal administrative help.

There has been a fundamental change in our business model, thanks to the astronomical changes of regulations and public reporting requirements. Automation and electronic medical records have actually not led to a workforce reduction. What's increased is the amount of support needed to make those systems work.

 

[steross]

And here’s one more to drive home the point, please ask if you’re unclear of the point

View attachment 71853

I would like to add to that graph of "physician services." We have reached a time for the first time in our history that more physicians are employees than independent physicians. Also, many of the "independant physicians" are 1099 contractors who function like employees and are required to sign over their billings to the Contract Management Group and are paid hourly.

So, for example when you go to the ER are receive a bill from that ER doctor, it is very likely that doctor is seeing only a tiny portion of what was actually billed and the rest goes to support large companies and the huge force of execs, managers, billers, workforce support, recruiting, compliance, HR, etc that goes with it.

 

[wrenhal]

And here’s one more to drive home the point, please ask if you’re unclear of the point

View attachment 71853

I would like to add to that graph of "physician services." We have reached a time for the first time in our history that more physicians are employees than independent physicians. Also, many of the "independant physicians" are 1099 contractors who function like employees and are required to sign over their billings to the Contract Management Group and are paid hourly.

So, for example when you go to the ER are receive a bill from that ER doctor, it is very likely that doctor is seeing only a tiny portion of what was actually billed and the rest goes to support large companies and the huge force of execs, managers, billers, workforce support, recruiting, compliance, HR, etc that goes with it.

Don't forget the increase in i.t. infrastructure and support that came with paperless records.

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

[docjoctoo]

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/policy-ten-administrators-for-every-one-us-doctor-092813#1

The Great Healthcare Bloat: 10 Administrators for Every 1 U.S. Doctor

A blogger for the Harvard Business Review recently crunched the numbers on healthcare employment and found something startling. From 1990 to 2012, the U.S. healthcare workforce grew by 75 percent. At a time when millions of Americans will soon enter the system under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), this seems like a welcome trend.

But there’s a catch. All but five percent of that job growth was in administrative staff, not doctors.

The ratio of doctors to other healthcare workers is now 1:16, up from 1:14 two decades ago. Of those 16 workers for every doctor, only six are involved in caring for patients—nurses and home health aids, for example. The other 10 are in purely administrative roles.


https://www.athenahealth.com/insight/expert-forum-rise-and-rise-healthcare-administrator
v

Healthcare as a business has fundamentally changed. It was a field dominated by small businesses in the 1970s — many physicians were solo practitioners with fairly minimal administrative help.

There has been a fundamental change in our business model, thanks to the astronomical changes of regulations and public reporting requirements. Automation and electronic medical records have actually not led to a workforce reduction. What's increased is the amount of support needed to make those systems work.

Because of these extremely costly administrative costs, it is almost impossible for a physician to practice solo.
No longer can physicians go out in the country where he/she is desperately needed. The "Country Doctor" is gone!

 

[CaliforniaCowboy]

Like it or not, well after 200 years the Constitution is a miserably failed experiment, because it sure didn't work to protect you from having deductions made from your paychecks for Social Security and Medicare. There is nothing wrong with learning a thing or two from other countries. I don't know of any of them wanting to adopt the USA way for health care.

You wrote: "Medicare coverage can be expanded to cover long term care and the other boo-hoo nonsense in that article WITHOUT implementing "Medicare for all". We don't need or want "comprehensive" anything from the Federal Government."

Then how do you expand Medicare coverage? Simply do what ksupoke implied and abolish most health care regulations as well as get the Feds out of it and let the states do it?

OMG, I can't stand having to teach you in every single post and every single thread.

You can look some of this stuff up.

The United States and our Constitution is FAR FROM a "failed experiment", it is the best, and most advanced of any civilization at any time.

The "constitution" is not supposed to protect me from changes, it is DESIGNED for changes, education and knowledge is supposed to protect me... self governance is directly dependent on an educated people - which we do not have.

A Constitution cannot protect us from ourselves. I can strive to have our freedom and liberty restored, which I am doing.

There clearly IS SOMETHING WRONG in "learning" socialism from other countries. We (as a free people) are diametrically opposed to socialism. We are capitalists. We are.

I do not want to expand Medicare coverage, I simply said that those expansions could have been made without "comprehensive" skulduggery. Without "medicare for all".

GO READ MY POST - IT IS IN THIS THREAD. Quit asking and read the thread.

I said PRIVATIZE medicare, and get the government out of the business completely. Issue vouchers for the poor to buy coverage from private insurers (like from Kaiser, for example).