Why I'm against the term "Medicare for All"

[gulliver]

Feel free to criticize and correct me on the following.

The approaches being proposed are essentially better than Medicare, so why call them Medicare? That plays into the Republican investment in propagandizing against Medicare for one thing. Second, Medicare without "Medigap" or "Advantage" or dental coverage wouldn't be good enough. Without those Rube Goldberg privatized side insurance coverages, people end up with either expensive drug costs or no "maximum out-of-pocket" (MOOP) benefit or both. They end up deciding whether to fill their prescriptions or get a filling. If they have a catastrophic illness for a time, the lack of a MOOP benefit can be a one-way ticket to a state nursing home.

Therefore, "Medicare for All" can sound lackluster (even if what is being proposed isn't). People don't want to feel there is any chance they might be "forced" to accept something lackluster. That's all people, imo, including everyone from people with great insurance to people with no insurance. That's why it is important that everyone be assured that the Dem plan offers everyone good insurance and also that they can keep their hard-earned, customary, familiar plans if they wish. Eliminate enrollment periods and just let people pick what they want. Use Medicare and the ACA as a foundation and create something better.

Personally, I like the British term "National Health Service." I like taking the word "care" completely out of the equation. First, I really like adding emphasis to positive health solutions (Let's Move! for example) as opposed to fixating too often only on disease and corrective care. Second, call me cynical, but I hear the word "care" and I associate that with my own less-than-complete faith in humanity. Sure, most people may care and will want to offer care to the sick most of the time. But some don't care or don't care about particular people. I like the word "service." Put it that way.

To me, a National Health Service should be Cabinet level and should focus on making people as healthy as possible. Period.

[Hoyt]

1. Agree, Medicare-for-All is an awful brand name. Whatever, it's called is going to take a massive

effort to get people to give up a known quantity -- there current insurance -- even if it is too costly, has administrative burdens, etc. People without insurance currently will probably be OK with a new plan, provided they don't have to pay anything, which is only likely for the poor. I cannot tell you how many ignorant rubes I've heard say that don't want to pay for insurance they aren't likely to use, as they stand their eaten up by obesity, diabetes, COPD, and worse.

One new problem is that too many people have seen the fate of the ACA swing on which Party is in office. That's going to be a difficult base upon which to explain to people they should be better off with the new, untested, system.

Whatever, we call the new system, it's not going to be a lot cheaper than what we have now, maybe 6 to 10% less than now, without a lot of cuts to providers and utilization. It gets even more expensive if the new system has to pick up the cost of the uninsured, underinsured, dental, vision, and maybe even coinsurance and deductibles that some candidates keep promising us.

We should have adopted Hillary Clinton's 1993 plan, we'd have the kinks worked out by now. Or, maybe, we should have just stayed with Britain, we'd have NHS.

[Hortensis]

3. That's why most of the candidates' variations

keep workplace insurance as an option. Sanders’ totalitarian version is hardly the only one.

The Medicare for all label is actually brilliant because people are comfortable with Medicare, believe they know what that label means, and are reassured. It suggests no big change, even for a dramatically, hugely different version like Sanders’. That’s why other candidates kept the label but made important changes.

Of course, any national healthcare program that provided the benefits of the ACA to the entire populace would be very different from Medicare, which my husband and I are both on, so we are hardly fooled. We purchase 4 additional policies to bring it up to the coveragestandards of the ACA and still need eye and dental insurance.

Even though Medicare is not even in the slightest degree a socialist program, using for profit providers, forcing virtually all Americans onto one government plan would be an extremist move, one the ACA carefully avoided in order to leave Americans the freedom of choice. Of course, the developers in the ACA believed most Americans with eventually migrate of their own choice to the public option as the best.

But it’s important to always have freedom and choice. — and notably competition. With what survived of workplace insurance, secured by union actions primarily, when the republican party was in power they would have a harder time convincing Americans the government insurance plan was the best it could be if their neighbors were doing better with private insurance. Without competitive coverage to compare to, ...

[wasupaloopa]

2. 1st caring for people and caring about people are two different things.

Doctors and nurses provide care as in treatment. As a prior medical clinic controller I know that most practioners care very deeply about the wellbeing of the people they are caring for.

I think the term Medicare for all comes from the idea that Medicare is seen as the nirvana of health care so let’s let everyone in on it. It is not free health care. It is a form of health insurance. You pay for part A (hospital bed day coverage) through payroll deductions and you pay premiums for everything else.

Medicare reimburses health providers less than other health insurance. If everyone got Medicare, we would not have enough providers so there would be waiting periods. The providers and hospitals and clinics would be reimbursed less than if everyone had private insurance so service would have to be rationed to cover costs.

No matter what you call it, it would have to pass both Houses of Congress which involves compromise similar to the ACA.

The issue is very complicated and the descriptions of it are too simplistic to have a meaningful discussion.

[Hortensis]

4. Good, informative post. :)

You know, there’s no reason why high-end medical professionals should have the promise of becoming wealthy out of what should be and is for many a very satisfying, meaningful career.

We need to eliminate simple venality as a draw, of course in the process making the cost of medical education accessible to a larger numbers who are drawn for the right reasons.

Aside from that, Healthcare reform needs to include reform of our medical schooling to meet the demands of a growing population. There’s no reason we should have to bring in doctors trained in other countries. Especially with more women in the workforce, we can have a plentiful supply of medical professionals. It only takes the will and the right people in government to make it happen.

[wasupaloopa]

7. The clinic I worked for was in Ridgecrest where the

earthquakes were this week. It is a poor community and most people did not have health insurance.

Our urgent care office was always full of people who were very sick because they waited until things got bad.

[ooky]

5. It was adopted as a great sounding slogan.

I would prefer, since our platform is health care as a right, just call it "health care for all who don't have it", and focus our solutions on those people, including the issues you pointed out that exist with elderly Medicare, which fly in the face of "health care as a right".

[customerserviceguy]

6. I see where you're coming from

Also, it's threatening to older voters. As it is, they face difficulties in getting healthcare providers to accept Medicare, and if they feel that they will have to compete with even greater numbers of people seeking to use Medicare, that their chances of being seen and/or treated will decrease.