"Medicare for All" - Do your homework people... [View all]

[MadDAsHell]

Response to another post, posting as an OP for discussion's sake:

As first a lurker and then an occasional poster, I've seen "Medicare for All" being bandied on DU for years. It's a bumper sticker slogan that people hear and love to repeat, especially well-meaning people that have never taken even a moment to look into the math of Medicare.

My sister is an RN at a not-for-profit brain-injury rehabilitation facility providing about 300 jobs. In a good year, they may end up in the black $50,000 to cover raises, new equipment, new positions, etc. NO ONE within 100 miles provides the specialized type of care they provide.

Their allowable cost-per-day (as calculated by Medicaid) is somewhere around $850. While her organization still takes a bath on Medicaid (considering there are other healthcare costs that Medicaid doesn't consider reimbursable PLUS Medicaid runs, at a minimum, a year behind on cost calculations), they get a handful of patients per year with commercial insurance that make up the difference.

Medicare on the other hand pays them $350 a day for the exact same care, an amount that would shut the program down within A YEAR if all their patients were reimbursed by Medicare.

When I hear "Medicare for All", what I'm really hearing is "I want 90% of the small not-for-profit healthcare providers in this country to go out of business."

But the "Medicare for All" bumper-sticker defenders don't even know this or care, because they've never taken the time to even look.

UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE: YES

MEDICARE FOR ALL: NOT IF YOU WANT TO HAVE A HEALTHCARE PROVIDER THAT WILL ACTUALLY SEE YOU