Medicare is more like government -sponsored insurance, see my reply to Spitefire. I still pay a monthly premium but it’s about a fifth of my old insurance, and I still get the silly “THIS IS NOT A BILL” paperwork in many languages telling me what they have been charged, what they paid, and what I paid/will get a bill for, just like with a PPO insurance company. Only so far my copays have been much less, so that’s nice.
With universal health care, the government would pay doctors and hospitals directly, they’d save paper and processing , and I wouldn’t even get involved. If we ever managed to get it here, I’m sure the GOP would insist we’d have some kind of monthly fee separate from other taxes so they could bitch about it and have an ID card so poor or immigrant people could be excluded.
Medicare isn’t bad. It’s the original version of what we old folks have, there’s a fee and copays but it covers a lot including hospitals etc, you can go to any doctor, and you can get a supplement plan to cover the copays for a lot less than ordinary health insurance.
“Medicare Advantage” is a ripoff, it’s privatized and has all the limitations (network of doctors, approval /rejection of care bullshit, etc) of an HMO.
Medicaid is for poor people and its main problem is that a lot of doctors won’t take Medicare patients because it pays them so much less for the same work. That sucks.
What we need is a cross between the two. Medicaid lacks doctors, but it also lacks copay. For all its inconveniences when I was on it it was easier to get care than some employer provided insurances.
Really what we need is a government owned corporation akin to the NHS, except with standards of care directly pinned to the AMA/APA to prevent meddling in politicized healthcare.
Medicare for all isn’t universal health care?
Medicare is more like government -sponsored insurance, see my reply to Spitefire. I still pay a monthly premium but it’s about a fifth of my old insurance, and I still get the silly “THIS IS NOT A BILL” paperwork in many languages telling me what they have been charged, what they paid, and what I paid/will get a bill for, just like with a PPO insurance company. Only so far my copays have been much less, so that’s nice.
With universal health care, the government would pay doctors and hospitals directly, they’d save paper and processing , and I wouldn’t even get involved. If we ever managed to get it here, I’m sure the GOP would insist we’d have some kind of monthly fee separate from other taxes so they could bitch about it and have an ID card so poor or immigrant people could be excluded.
Not my comment, but I think it’s more that Medicare fucking sucks. But if everybody has it that would be better than now.
Medicare isn’t bad. It’s the original version of what we old folks have, there’s a fee and copays but it covers a lot including hospitals etc, you can go to any doctor, and you can get a supplement plan to cover the copays for a lot less than ordinary health insurance.
“Medicare Advantage” is a ripoff, it’s privatized and has all the limitations (network of doctors, approval /rejection of care bullshit, etc) of an HMO.
Medicaid is for poor people and its main problem is that a lot of doctors won’t take Medicare patients because it pays them so much less for the same work. That sucks.
What we need is a cross between the two. Medicaid lacks doctors, but it also lacks copay. For all its inconveniences when I was on it it was easier to get care than some employer provided insurances.
Really what we need is a government owned corporation akin to the NHS, except with standards of care directly pinned to the AMA/APA to prevent meddling in politicized healthcare.
I’d vote for that.