Elizabeth Warren Releases Medicare for All Plan
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But with the amount of money floating around at the private insurance companies, plus all their make-work jerbs, I just don't see them being possible to take on like that in one fell swoop. Rather, such a plan is sure to be jiu-jitsued by the insurance companies similar to how we ended up with Romney^h^h^h^h^h^hObamacare.
Simply provide a competing option based on allowing anyone to buy in to Medicare. People that have access to good private insurers can stick with them, so they lose nothing. The buy-in price could cover the true cost, while still being competitive with the current options for the self-employed, so no budget problem. Big Insurance will always throw up the standard "but we shouldn't have to compete" sob story (see also: Comcraps vs muni fiber), but would lack any real basis for objection rather than dealing with a mortal threat.
I guess this is ultimately just divisive politics. Preaching to a choir that sees coupling increased taxes on the rich as killing two birds with one stone - but dead on arrival to everyone else.
Most rich people are usually willing to pay good fraction of their net worth to live 10-20 years longer.
As a well-off individual, why would you want to give a bunch of money to a company with the same eventual dynamic wherein they decide to not cover the specific treatment you eventually need?
As an insurer, why would you want to be in the position of customers expecting you cover unknown unknowns? If you're aiming to cover boutique treatments, then your risk model becomes what expensive new treatments are invented!
Furthermore, once you're talking about that kind of market, there's no need to bundle everything into a single plan. Rather there is a baseline of modern medicine that can be predictably provided (however that is), and then people with more resources can direct paying for hopeful emerging treatments.
Private options are significantly better than the free one, and there is some social stigma associated with going to a government hospital.
Note that I was arguing against dumping a product on the market below cost. So if you're actually trying to support open-world market competition as opposed to closed-world capital consolidation, you should appreciate what I said.
All successful countries with single-payer like plans are considerably less generous than this one and most countries don't even have single payer!
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.