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 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.