Question about Medicare 4 all, how would it cost more than the current system?

[Nanjeanne]

31. Um - not true re first paragraph. And re 2nd - Medicare For All is already better than regular

Medicare. Your statement about cancer is simply not true. Regarding your statement about long hospital stays - this is also simply not true. Medicare Part A covers a stay in the hospital for any single spell of illness or injury within a time frame of 90 days. This is known as a benefit period, and there's no limit to the number of benefit periods you can have.

Medicare is a great program. Unfortunately, instead of Medicare providing all the care, which would be preferable - our government has to give private insurers a piece of it - so people buy supplementals. Those are for: Copayments, Coinsurance (usually the 20% above the 80%) and Deductibles. There are many many different supplemental gap plans. They all have the same requirements (ex. "A" must include XXXXX whether it's offerred by Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, etc. They compete on service, location and price. Then there are private Advantage programs. Another government give-away to private insurance. After reviewing all our options, we realized we would never participate in a Medicare Advantage program because it's entirely private run - but once again the government supports those low rates they offer - and the private insurers limit the care while pretending it's some great thing that they give you a membership to a gym. You've got private insurers giving you a pool of physicians to choose from, and reviewing what care you can and can't get, etc.

We bought supplementals because we travel and wanted flexibility to go to any doctor we wanted. So we bought a pretty inclusive "N" supplemental. It wasn't ridiculously expense at $156/month. That is in addition to the $134 that comes out of our SS for Medicare. So for less than $300 a month for me and less than $300 for my husband we have had fabulous care. Medicare has never denied us anything. I went through breast cancer treatment. My husband has a blood cancer that required a stem cell transplant and continuous tests and monitoring of his health. Medicare never questioned a single thing. Our only issue is with private insurance prescription plans. Unfortunately Medicare isn't involved in that Part D (thank you Bush) so you must get private drug plans. My husband's maintenance drug is $10,000 a month for 21 pills. Even with insurance his copay would be $800 a month. We rely on the Leukemia Association for a grant to cover that.

Medicare For All would bring all the many different government programs like Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, Veteran's different programs, the ridiculous subsidies the government currently pays to private health insurers just so people can afford their insanely inflated rates, etc. For me - I sure as hell would like my tax dollars going to health care and not subsidies to already uber-profitable insurers. People in group insurance plans paid for by their employees are always seeing their costs go up/their deductibles go up and they never see how much their employer is paying. Add that to the mix. Individuals who aren't getting subsidies from tax payers to give to private insurers are paying extremely high monthly premiums plus deductibles and cost-shares. Add that to the mix. Individuals who are getting subsidies are still paying a hefty monthly premium and deductible and taxpayers are already paying their remaining costs. Add that to the mix. Bigger pool, better cost sharing, better coverage. And private insurers will still sell additional policies - like other countries have. Don't want to wait for an MRI for elective surgery - policy! Want a private room - policy! Want coverage for cosmetic surgery - policy!

But at least people won't have to send their kids out to sell lemonade to pay for their chemo. And while you are dealing with a difficult illness - you don't also have to deal with losing your house or going into bankruptcy to pay the hospital bills!