Help, I feel so dumb! Someone please explain the diff: public option, Medicare for All, Single Pay

[DebJ]

I just saw two posts arguing about two of these. I've seen lots of those posts, and I've never yet managed to get a clear
picture of the three.

[seaotter]

1. "Medicare for all" is the same as "single payer", a "public option" is a way to acheive it.

[Thinkingabout]

2. Medicare is Medicare, nothing more nothing less. ACA was unable to include single payer

and get it passed Congress. Medicare was set up to provide medical care for seniors and then added those who has been disable for two years and other exceptions. ACA provided health care for everyone.

[Stallion]

3. Public Option

was a proposal to set up both governmental and private medical care options and let them compete and fight it out in the market

[gcomeau]

4. Medicare For All = Single Payer.

In that there is a single payer of health insurance claims, Medicare. Not a mish mash of hundreds of different private health insurance entities.


Public option is a Public health insurance provider (like Medicare) but presented as an option alongside all the private health insurance providers that already exist as just one more choice on the list. (So it's not single payer, because there are still all those other payers in the system)

[KamaAina]

5. Medicare For All is one form of single payer.

The advantage is that the Medicare infrastructure is already in place, so we'd only have to expand it, not create something entirely new as was done with Social Security and later Medicare itself.

[DebJ]

6. Thanks everyone