Medicare For All Explained

Medicare for All is a bill that would create a single payer system created and made famous by Bernie Sanders. The bill would expand Medicare to include vision and dental. Then through a four year transition period expand to include every American. While Representative Pramila Jayapal's bill does it in two years. This would essentially create government run insurance for all Americans. This would give 28 million Americans that don't have health insurance. We would meet every other rich developed country. They all got a single payer system and for good reasons.

The bill would make that no American would have to pay out of pocket for doctor visit. The bill would not pay for brand name prescription drugs but would for generic drugs. But even with prescription drugs you would not be charged more than $200 a year. It would make it illegal for insurance companies or employers to duplicate the coverage of the bill. In theory abolishing private insurance companies as they will become useless at this point. It would keep hospitals and doctors private but make insurance public. Private insurance would still exist for elective surgery like plastic surgery as Medicare would everything except elective surgery.

Here is some of what Medicare for all would cover

· Hospital Services, including patient and outpatient hospital services, 24 hour emergency services and inpatient prescription drugs

· Ambulatory patient services

· Primary and preventative services, including chronic disease management 

· Prescription drugs, medical devices, biological products including outpatient prescription drugs

· Mental Health and substance health abuse treatment including inpatient care

· Laboratory and diagnostic services

· Comprehensive reproductive, maternity, and newborn care

· Oral health, audiology, and vision services

 The bill also would allow for the secretary of health to look through to the benefit package and change it if there has been a change in medical treatment, new medical improvement or device, etc. In theory to make the single payer system more effective if new medical practice is found and adopted.

The bill would be payed for by a list of options

· Creating a 4 percent income-based premium paid by employees, exempting the first $29,000 in income for a family of four

· Imposing a 7.5 percent income-based premium paid by employers, exempting the first $2 million in payroll

· Eliminating health tax expenditures

· Making the federal income tax more progressive, including a marginal tax rate of up to 70 percent on those making above $10 million

· Making the estate tax more progressive, including a 77 percent top rate on an inheritance above $1 billion

· Establishing a tax on extreme wealth

· Closing a tax loophole that allows self-employed people to avoid paying certain taxes by creating an S corporation

· Imposing a fee on large financial institution

· Repealing corporate accounting gimmicks

Polling show that 70% of Americans support Medicare for all. Multitude of studies have found that America is being beat by performance of our healthcare system by single payer systems across the world. Medicare for all would save money. Mercatus, a libertarian think tank funded by the Koch Brothers shows it would save the USA at least 2 trillion dollars over 10 years. You cant get any more biased then that and it still proved that it would save the USA 2 trillion dollars. The University of Massachusetts PERI says that it would save 5 trillion. Friedman would say it would save 11.5 trillion. The USA spends twice as much on healthcare on person than other countries with single payer system.

Cost of Healthcare per Capital

With a single payer system we can eventually cut the cost of our healthcare cost with more benefits. The USA is actually falling behind  in our healthcare results. If we look just in life expectancy compared to some of the countries that have single payer systems.

Japan: 84.118

Switzerland: 83.706

Australia: 83.314

France: 82.946

Sweden: 82.864

Canada: 82,782

Netherlands: 82.218

Austria:82.036

United Kingdom: 81.932

Belgium: 81.558

Germany: 81.436

Denmark: 81.066

USA: 79.772

According to the World Health Organization The USA ranks 37th in overall quality and efficiency of our healthcare system.

1 France

2 Italy

3 San Marino

4 Andorra

5 Malta

6 Singapore

7 Spain

8 Oman

9 Austria

10 Japan

11 Norway

12 Portugal

13 Monaco

14 Greece

15 Iceland

16 Luxembourg

17 Netherlands

18 United Kingdom

19 Ireland

20 Switzerland

21 Belgium

22 Colombia

23 Sweden

24 Cyprus

25 Germany

26 Saudi Arabia

27 United Arab Emirates

28 Israel

29 Morocco

30 Canada
31 Finland
32 Australia
33 Chile
34 Denmark
35 Dominica
36 Costa Rica
37 USA

Finally the USA has the highest amount of avoidable death. This is especially true since we pay more for drugs than other similar countries. So we have people dying because they can't afford to pay for their medication and sometimes to visit the doctor.

Bernie even claims that families would pay less. Here is one of the claim

Medicare would even save businesses money with change in healthcare prices depending on the size of the company

This is the change of healthcare spending for businesses.

· Small businesses (0-9 employees): –36.1% (decrease)

· Medium-sized businesses (10-19 employees): –10.5% (decrease)

· Medium-sized businesses (20-99 employees): –7.6% (decrease)

· Large businesses (100-499 employees): –9.8% (decrease)

· Large businesses (500+ employees): +5.7% (increase) = only +0.1% of gross receipts

In the end

1. Medicare-for-All Single-Payer provides more options: A single-payer system like Medicare-for-All will increase people’s options of doctors, hospitals, and treatments  regardless of where they work or their income level.

2. Medicare-for-All Single-Payer is better for the economy: The country overall will spend less on healthcare. Families will save thousands of dollars compared to what they currently spend on healthcare. Patients will have no additional out-of-pocket expenses (ex: deductible, co-pays) for a robust array of benefits.

3. Medicare-for-All Single-Payer is better for the public and private sector: Private and public hospitals and healthcare professionals will save money and focus more on their patients because they will be free from the bureaucracy and burnout that comes from dealing with multiple insurance payers..

4. Medicare-for-All Single-Payer is better for business: Businesses will save money because they will no longer have the burden of providing healthcare for their employees. And workers will no longer have a gap in coverage when they switch jobs.