The merits of Medicare for All have been proven by this pandemic

[LiberalLovinLug]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/the-merits-of-medicare-for-all-have-been-proven-by-this-pandemic/



A pandemic is not the time to be having discussions about how to design a national health care system. The fact that the United States, which has 4 percent of the world’s population, leads the world with 25 percent of all coronavirus infections, indicates at a glance that something about our nation’s health care is irredeemably broken. In just a few months, more than 40 million Americans became unemployed in a country where a majority are expected to obtain health care through employer-provided insurance. Even the New York Times has pointed out that, “Nothing illuminates the problems with an employer-based health care system quite like massive unemployment in the middle of a highly contagious and potentially deadly disease outbreak.”

The Times has hardly been a champion of the nationalized health care system that progressive activists have demanded for years. The unimaginably large (and growing) death toll from COVID-19 should not be, as the paper’s editorial board member Jeneen Interlandi says, “an opportunity to look at health care reform with fresh eyes—and to maybe, finally, rebuild the nation’s health care system in a way that works for all Americans.” We, as a nation, should have figured this out a long time ago.

As Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, pointed out at a recent Senate hearing, left unchecked the coronavirus could spread to 100,000 people per day. Republican Senator Rand Paul was not happy with this grim assessment, instead demanding that the scientist instead offer up “more optimism” to the American people about the disease. But that is precisely how opponents of a single-payer health care system have painted our deeply flawed employer-based system for many years—with a veneer of positivity that was never matched by reality.
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Just as progressives were right more than a decade ago that a single-payer or Medicare for All system was best poised to meet our health care needs, that same rallying cry for such a universal and free health care plan remains more relevant and appropriate than ever. Even the New York Times agrees, admitting perhaps a bit reluctantly that, “A single-payer system in which one entity (usually the federal government) covers every citizen regardless of age or employment status, could work.” But is it too late?

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[Wounded Bear]

1. We definitely need some kind of universal health care...nt

[LiberalLovinLug]

2. Its the perfect storm

There's always been Disaster Capitalism. Mitch and Trump and their buddies are doing quite well with covid bailout money for small business's for their large business's

Why not then also take advantage of Disaster Liberalism. Beat them with their own rules. Use the reality witnessed by everyone, of the limits to what the present system can offer, compared to the promise and security of single payer universal healthcare.

[safeinOhio]

4. With all of the long term effects we are seeing now

for those that survive the virus, I'm seeing Medicaid For All.

[stopbush]

3. Were MFA in operation now during the pandemic, the government would need to set up

automatic payments of premiums in the same way Medicare patients can elected to have their monthly premiums paid out of their SS benefits. And there would still be copays, just like there are copays for the current Medicare system. And - since Medicare is partially funded through payroll taxes - the government would need to deduct those taxes as well from any relief funding that is provided to Americans as a substitute for income they are currently not earning.

All this assumes that the Feds would be providing relief funding to all who are out of work for as long as they are out of work.