Medicare for All, My Idea

The killing of the United Healthcare CEO has brought American's frustration with our insane healthcare system into the open. People are expressing indifference to the murder and in some cases actually applauding it.

Perhaps the time has come to push for Medicare for All. Here's my proposal.

Get rid of the insurance vultures and extend Medicare coverage to everyone. Yes, it would cost about $3 trillion annually but we're halfway there already paying about $800 billion for Medicare and $600 billion for Medicaid. 

Companies and employees are paying exorbitant prices for health insurance, about $8,500 for single coverage and $24,000 for family coverage. Institute a payroll tax of $12,000 paid for 80% by the employer and 20% by the employee or about $2,400 per employee (this could be adjusted up or down based upon income) and $9,600 (this could also be adjusted up or down based upon employee salary) per employee by the employer. 

This would probably save the employer money and generate $1.6 trillion in revenue because there are 134 million employees nationally. 

Medicare Parts B&D will be $185 per month in 2025 or $2,220 so $2,400 is not unreasonable for folks still working. I'll be paying an IRMAA of $74 and $17 on top of the $185. That's a total of $276 or $3,312 for Medicare in 2025 so the numbers have room for adjustment once salary is taken into account.

I'm not sure why companies aren't clamoring for something like this because I suspect that it would be more cost effective than our current system by a lot. Of course we would also have to work dental coverage into this but I'm sure the country that landed people on the moon could figure it out.

Now the only problem would be that our medical infrastructure may not be able to handle the extra demand. Well, time to start training more NPs and PAs and give them more responsibility. More MDs wouldn't hurt either.