Why Medicare is the Solution--Not the Problem

[flpoljunkie]

Why Medicare Is the Solution — Not the Problem
FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2011

Not only is Social Security on the chopping block in order to respond to Republican extortion. So is Medicare.

~So what’s the answer? For starters, allow anyone at any age to join Medicare. Medicare’s administrative costs are in the range of 3 percent. That’s well below the 5 to 10 percent costs borne by large companies that self-insure. It’s even further below the administrative costs of companies in the small-group market (amounting to 25 to 27 percent of premiums). And it’s way, way lower than the administrative costs of individual insurance (40 percent). It’s even far below the 11 percent costs of private plans under Medicare Advantage, the current private-insurance option under Medicare.

In addition, allow Medicare – and its poor cousin Medicaid – to use their huge bargaining leverage to negotiate lower rates with hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies. This would help move health care from a fee-for-the-most-costly-service system into one designed to get the highest-quality outcomes most cheaply.

Estimates of how much would be saved by extending Medicare to cover the entire population range from $58 billion to $400 billion a year. More Americans would get quality health care, and the long-term budget crisis would be sharply reduced.

Let me say it again: Medicare isn’t the problem. It’s the solution.

http://robertreich.org/post/7941066493

[azul]

1. This should be Obama's bargaining chip, in a sane world.

And beyond this political-opportunity debt raising exercise, maybe we could try a substantial jobs program in curing and preventing disease. This would create really good jobs, increase basic knowledge to reduce pollution and the toxic exposures, and have a good possibility of drastically reducing future medicare costs.