1944 poll: Would you rather have Social Security handle health insurance?

[yurbud]

It's remarkable that people understood this even back then and our elected representatives have resisted what we would call Medicare for All today for so many decades.

If Democrats want to win, and more importantly, do the cost effective and morally right thing, they would say "Medicare for All" every time someone puts a camera in their face.

That three word framing of the issue essentially is the beginning and end of the debate, and the rest is just filling in the details, which would actually be easier than Medicare for old people since you would capture all those younger, healthier people who don't buy insurance now because they are playing medical emergency roulette.

Link to tweet

[Gabi Hayes]

1. Vouchers!

We all know government doesn’t work.

Let those spongers get off the dole and go back to work

Get rid of all them entweetlements already

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. 'Medicare For All' works for me!

[MichMan]

3. I don't believe employer paid insurance was very common until several years later

[yurbud]

5. It's ironic too, because a lot of people don't realize how much it costs their employer

which reduces what they could potentially be paid, and it might be crappy insurance for the price too.

[Progressive dog]

4. FDR chose not to tie

medical insurance to social security because he was afraid that it would doom both. The history of the last eighty years pretty much confirms that his fear was justified. The ACA is under sustained assault now, in spite of positive poll numbers.

[yurbud]

6. ACA is assaultable because it is a complex incremental program

so it's easy to go after pieces of it without people understanding what's going on.

I think on the whole, Obamacare is an improvement over what we had before, but it took more than a cursory look to decide that.

By contrast, when Republicans try to defund Medicare or privatize Social Security, everyone knows immediately what they are up to and respond accordingly.

[Progressive dog]

9. Social Security had an incremental

phase in and if it had included universal health care it would have been more complex than ACA.

[yurbud]

10. I'm not saying it should have been done up front, but it would have been popular at any time

ACA is complex because it is keeping the for profit insurance piece, so people who don't look at the details and see their premiums going up might wonder what the improvement was.

I think the standardization of for profit plans was an improvement, but again, if you got your insurance through your job, you might not know about or appreciate that.

[Progressive dog]

12. Upending over 1/6 of the economy,

putting medical insurance companies out of business, with nurses, doctors, and other health care workers now having no place to work other than the government would sure be a major change. It would be very complex and costly.

[yurbud]

19. I don't think anyone in Washington is thinking of the low level claims processors

and there are a lot of things for doctors, nurses, and others to not like about dealing with private insurance.

We have done far more costly things to kill people unnecessarily, or to bail out the sociopaths on Wall Street.

Why not do it for something that will be a net good?

[Progressive dog]

20. Because the bailout was one time and saved the economy

Full medical coverage will cost more each year than the bailout did in total. That's just the first reason.

[Progressive dog]

15. Medicare is pretty complex

and requires that providers accept the government specified payment for each service-of which there are thousands. The ACA has provisions affecting Medicare payments that providers agreed to because of ACA's increase in covered patients. So now Medicare is tied to the ACA and few are paying attention.

[yurbud]

16. For people ON Medicare, it is relatively simple

to the degree that it's complicated, it's because the right and bought centrists have thrown intentional monkey wrenches in the works.

[Progressive dog]

17. Medicare covers about 1/6 of the population

and when started, there were fewer people over 65. As far as people on Medicare, it's pretty much the same as any health insurance, with you paying monthly for part B if you choose to have more than "in hospital" coverage, finding a way to pay the 20% of part B costs and you buying a separate drug plan with co-pays, a doughnut hole, and perhaps a deductible. Of course the drug plan will have a formulary and won't pay for all FDA approved drugs. You have to re-up to drugs and/or advantage plans each year. Most change formularies and patient costs each year.
Then there are dental costs (you have to buy coverage), vision (you have to buy coverage), long term care where you go broke first-then you might get medicaid.
This is at a time when you usually need more healthcare, when your income has decreased, when it is certain that you are not as physically and maybe mentally as capable as you were. That's what you claim is relatively simple.
BTW I am one of those people on medicare and I paid into the system for over 40 years (and my employers matched those payments) so that I would have some affordable health coverage when I retired.

[yurbud]

18. the 20%, donut holes and the like are the monkey wrenches I mentioned

[Ken Burch]

7. So is Social Security.

The 'thugs are STILL pushing to privatize or part-privatize that, to put the money set aside in the program at the disposal of Wall Street. And we don't know if they can be stopped.

[Progressive dog]

8. Social Security is still in business

Last edited Tue Jan 30, 2018, 05:07 PM - Edit history (1)

and has had many updates since inception. So far, they haven't succeeded in privatizing the investments. FDR was right.

[LanternWaste]

13. Not quite accurate.

Not very accurate.

"In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Isidore Falk and Edgar Sydenstricter to help draft provisions to Roosevelt's pending Social Security legislation to include publicly funded health care programs. These reforms were attacked by the American Medical Association as well as state and local affiliates of the AMA as "compulsory health insurance." Roosevelt ended up removing the health care provisions from the bill in 1935. Fear of organized medicine's opposition to universal health care became standard for decades after the 1930s"

(Jan Coombs The rise and fall of HMOs: an American health care revolution.)

[Progressive dog]

14. FDR did not tie medical to social security-that is a fact

So yeah, it is accurate, FDR made that decision, that is fact.

[JI7]

11. People were all for govt programs until civil rights when non whites would benefit

Also.

ThE country is backwards all because a large group of people vote their resentments.