Reply #7: Good chant at HCR Rallies = "Open Up Medicare! Single Payer Now!" [View All]

[Overseas]

Opening up Medicare would get us help sooner than some new public option that needs to be discussed and amended for a few years before it even begins.

Medicare Part E- E for Everybody, as Thom Hartmann says
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/thomhartmann/1

Wed Sep 09th 2009, 05:05 PM
The President this morning admitted on national television that he lost control of the message with health care. It's time to reboot - and use a very, very, very simple message so all Americans can understand it.
Let's use Medicare, which nearly every American understands. Just create "Medicare Part E" where the "E" represents "everybody." Just let any citizen in the US buy into Medicare.

It would be so easy. No need to reinvent the wheel with this so-called "public option" that's a whole new program from the ground up. Medicare already exists. It works. Some people will like it, others won't - just like the Post Office versus FedEx analogy the President is so comfortable with.

Just pass a simple bill - it could probably be just a few lines, like when Medicare was expanded to include disabled people - that says that any American citizen can buy into the program at a rate to be set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which reflects the actual cost for us to buy into it.

Thus, Medicare Part E would be revenue neutral!

To make it available to people of low income, Congress could raise the rates slightly for all currently non-eligible people (like me - under 65) to cover the cost of below-200%-of-poverty people. Revenue neutral again.