Do you support Medicare for All?

[SocialDemocrat61]

110 votes, 1 pass | Time left: 2 days, 8 hours, 13 minutes
	Yes
	102 (93%)
	No
	3 (3%)
	Other
	5 (5%)
	1 DU member did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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[Rver]

1. I posed that question to Mike Flood (repug Ne)

Last summer at his town hall. Wow! What a hissy fit from him. "Nooooo...." he said. "We can't afford it". I thoroughly enjoyed asking that question. I expected the response tho.

[GreenWave]

2. We can't afford not to.

How many people go to work sick and spread it?

[CrispyQ]

4. I worked for a company that rewarded employees who didn't use any of their sick pay.

OMG, what a stupid policy!

If you didn't use any of your sick pay throughout the year & in January you got your sick pay paid to you in a lump sum, minus taxes of course, and...a special lunch with the company president! I have never seen more sickly people at work! My cube was next to a woman who never called in sick & she'd be coughing & sneezing & I'm sure she spent entire mornings in the bathroom a few times. I never said anything but my coworker who sat on the other side of her, was pissed & complained to our manager, but he said there was nothing he could do, so the coworker took the issue to HR, who defended the policy & said it kept sick calls down. The coworker consulted an attorney & a few weeks later there was an announcement that the no-sick-day-appreciation-payback program had been cancelled & all you got was lunch with the president. I quit that year, but I suspect the following year there were significantly fewer people at the reward luncheon.

[roamer65]

3. As a Canadian, hell yes.

[leftstreet]

5. MediCAID for All

Medicare's out of pocket expenses keep increasing. Plus there's no long term care, vision or dental.

It's reaching the point it'd need an overhaul to make it affordable for everyone

[area51]

17. Respectfully, the proposed Medicare for All

is all-encompassing, not merely an expansion of the current Medicare. Please have a look at my sig line links.

[markie]

6. Universal Health Care

not to be called Medicare for all....

[mopinko]

7. other

i think 1 reason m4a didnt catch on is that medicare is shit insurance. when a program needs 3 min infomercials on day time teevee to tell u y u need a medigap policy, that program is crap.
and after a yr of the orange menace slashing anything and everything, i’m nervous about the whole idea. always have been.

in a lot of states, medicaid is actually good insurance. have always thought the public option was the way to go, but for medicaid, not medicare. a lot of ppl love it, but i think most of those ppl have lived w NO insurance for a long stretch.

[Ms. Toad]

14. Medicare is hardly shit insurance.

Medicare Advantage is shit insurance - and the 3 minute infomercials are for Medicare Advantage plans - not Medigap. (I've **never** seen a Medigap advertisement -- or received mailings during the enrollment period to entice me to buy a Medigap policy.)

My health care, with a Medigap policy, is more comprehensive, cheaper, with fewer barriers to care than I've ever had in my life. (And I've had insurance coverage for the past 52 years).

My total cost for non-pharmaceutical medical expenses this year are $4338 (premiums + out of pocket expenses) - no matter how expensive my care actually is. Ballpark, my pharmaceutical expenses add on $2-300 (premiums + drugs). For my spouse (one of those expensive pharmaceutical creatures) will add up to $2100 to her annual cost (we haven't refigured since she dropped one expensive medication in favor of one which is capped at $35/month). I can go to 98.8% of the non-pediatric doctors in the country (only 1.2% of non-pediatric doctors have opted out of Medicare). I don't need a referral to see any of them. I don't have to wait for pre-approval of expensive things like MRI, etc. (Only a handful of primarily cosmetic procedures require pre-approval, except for the 17 (IIRC) added this year in the state in which I live.) If I have medical expenses out of the country, I am entitled to reimbursement at a rate of 80%. In the 4 years my spouse and I have been on Medicare, we have had one denial of care, after the fact. - the provider appealed, and the appeal was denied AND the provider ordered to eat the costs since they neglected to get pre-approval for one of the few procedures that require pre-approval.

Medicare Advantage, on the other hand has unpredictable expenses (allowed to be as high as $11,774 (permitted out-of-pocket max + Part B premiums) plus any additional premiums paid for a Medicare Advantage plan). You are generally limited to a specific network of doctors, generally only local - outside of an emergency. Many require a referral to see a specialist. Things considered to be expensive (MRIs, for example) require pre-approval, which is denied at a fairly high rate - not to mention the waiting period for approval at times when delaying care might mean the difference between life and death.

That said, there should be a sliding scale for premiums (or covered for all through taxes) and both dental care and pharmaceuticals should be covered without a separate policy.

[MineralMan]

8. Sure. But Nobody Is Proposing That Right Now.

There are more urgent questions.

[delisen]

9. Half of Medicare is already Privatised as Medicare Advantage

It has enormous cost overruns and is destroying original Medicare.

The slogan Medicare for All is radioactive and causes many people to oppose

If you mean Universal Health Care, I am for it.

[leftstreet]

10. +1

[Clouds Passing]

11. Healthcare for all.

Nobody should have to go through a disease or injury without adequate healthcare!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mvd]

12. Huge yes

Hopefully Medicare can be strengthened before we do it, too. Profit should not get in the way of needed care. As long as Dump is there, however, I’m worried about how far we are from even where we were.

[Jacson6]

13. Yes. I'm not for free health care.

Currently Medicare is a 20% co-pay for any charges. I support that. We could have a 5% additional flat tax to raise the Medicare tax rate to 7.9% on all income no matter the source. The US would also cap the amount we spend for pharmacy drugs. If the drug price is over that then they get the set US price or the US doesn't buy it. Believe me we can drag the BigPharma kicking and screaming into fair prices or they get nothing.

[mike_c]

15. I have Medicare

It's not the be all and end all solution to our healthcare crisis because at present, it's just another on-ramp for that dysfunctional system. Nonetheless, it's low cost and as close to comprehensive as most Americans can get, these days. It needs some work, but speaking as a recipient, it's the best on ramp most of us have. I am VERY happy with Medicare *combined with a platinum secondary policy* that my pension provides. I would never want to go back, even to my former employer provided insurance.

Edit: I should also add that we have vision, dental, prescription coverage, and my pension reimburses us both for our monthly Medicare premium. This is because I joined a strong union and had a great union supported career. That solution needs to be extended in some form or another to all Americans.

Let me also add that both of us have age related health challenges, but my wife has needed several major surgeries and lengthy hospital stays during the last several years, and our out of pocket for all that is close to $0. I think we've been billed maybe a couple hundred dollars in total.

[W_HAMILTON]

16. I support Medicare for All and any and all PROGRESS made towards achieving universal healthcare.

I don't let the perfect -- which Medicare for All isn't even really... -- be the enemy of the good.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

18. Need details

[onethatcares]

19. yes

when you receive your first 50K invoice you'll understand why.

[GoodRaisin]

20. I support driving insurance out of the equation altogether.

More like the VA model, but for everyone. Also I support any necessary intermediary steps taken toward this end.