If you can't wait for real health care and don't think Congress is doing enough,

[Cleita]

here might be another way to go. If you think Medicare is your choice and you have FICA deducted from your paycheck, demand to be able to participate in the Medicare program. You pay for it and everyone who works pays into it. You deserve it. This time you have to petition the courts for your rights. You don't need Congress. While they are dithering about public options, coops and triggers up in the Hill Whorehouse that caters to K Street, you can be demanding your rights through the court system. Stranger things have happened and I wonder if any legal eagles out there are willing to make a test case of this.

Read this opinion on extending Medicare to everyone: http://www.medicarerights.org/pdf/042307_HayesResponse_Medicare_Trustees_Report.pdf

<snip>

Medicare is the solution to our soaring health care costs, not the problem. Americans are living
healthier and longer lives, in large part thanks to the reliable and affordable health care provided by
Medicare. Independent economic analyses show that Medicare could cover all Americans—
including the 45 million Americans currently uninsured—and still cut annual U.S. health
expenditures by $60 billion1 to $200 billion 2. Medicare can achieve what for-profit insurers cannot:
it reduces the high administrative costs of our fragmented health care system and cuts the
paperwork that prevents us from getting health care to the people who need it.

<snip>

Okay, all of us already know this and the whores on the Hill know it too, but they insist on protecting Wall Street and the insurers through it. Will people who pay a payroll tax be willing to make a class action suit through the courts demanding the right to either be able to participate in the Medicare program or if not to stop paying the tax on it? It could be our Trojan Horse. Any ideas people? I'm sort of grasping at straws here I know but it seems we have to try everything or not bother. Nothing is going to get rid of the insurance companies other than a choice to be able to pick Medicare instead. For this we need to make everyone eligible for it. I think the courts can do this. They seem to be able to override the powers of Congress and that of the President himself. After all the highest court in the land did circumvent our Constitution and appointed George Bush as our President.

[customerserviceguy]

1. The only reason Medicare "works"

is because the part that Medicare (and supplements) don't pay to doctors and hospitals because of mandated rates, just gets passed on to the rest of us, including those with private insurance and especially those without.

Case in point: the Senate bill attempts to finance its limited version of universal healthcare by mandating a half trillion dollar cut in Medicare funding. If we were all on Medicare, we'd either see prices rise, or those in the healthcare industry going out of business. That's what happens to firms that spend more than they take in.

[Cleita]

2. Everything you posted there has been debunked today by various members

of Congress, doctors and hospital administrators that have been interviewed all day long on radio. The truth is that the private insurers are reimbursing hospitals and doctors at a lower fee rate than Medicare and they are challenging the billing whereas Medicare pays what they agree to. Really, you have to talk to the people who deal with this day in and day out and you will know that everything you are saying is insurance company propaganda.

[customerserviceguy]

9. What about the half trillion that the Senate wants to cut

and the 400 billion that the House wants to cut from Medicare? Is it possible that is what the senior teabaggers are upset about?

I'm not spouting propaganda, I'm in favor of single payer, that means Medicare, Medicaid, everything, all in one plan. Then we'd have people charged the same prices for the same services from the same provider.

The medical industry is full of this kind of shit. A year ago, I worked for a supplier of endoscopy equipment, we had a whole fucking department assigned to producing quotations for our stuff, everybody paid a different price, depending on what national "contract" they were on.

Put us all under one single-payer program, and we can price things the way they do at the supermarket, not the way they do at the airlines.

[Oregone]

4. Huh...so that doesn't explain how it works in countries with only Medicare-type systems

But thanks for letting everyone know that Medicare is just part of the problem, not the solution

[customerserviceguy]

10. There are large differences in the way "Medicare for all"

works in those countries, and the way it does here, unfortunately. When you have "Medicare for all", you have single payer, which is what I advocate.

I have no illusions that covering everybody will save us money somehow. But I feel as a matter of basic human decency, that we need to do it anyway. Pointing to the current multi-tiered medical system and saying that one part works perfectly ignores the impact the other parts have. To say that "Medicare works great" is just as incorrect as saying that "private insurance works great".

Each part has its shortcomings, the latter with dropping people who don't have piddling expenses, the former with the cost-shifting that goes on.

[drm604]

3. While I agree that Medicare for everyone might be a good idea,

I highly doubt that the courts can or would do what you're asking. It would have to be done through Congress.

[Cleita]

5. Congress had the opportunity and backed away from it to placate

the Blue Dog democrats, so none of the bills is offering Medicare to everyone. I just heard Congress people being interviewed on the radio saying they had to take it out for votes. So we've hit the cyclopean wall of Congress and I dare say the White House. Now we need a Trojan Horse. This might be it.

[drm604]

6. The fact that Congress won't do it

doesn't somehow give the courts the the right (or the will) to do so. The system just doesn't work like that.

[Cleita]

7. You don't think the courts wouldn't pay attention to millions of workers

who have FICA deducted from their checks demanding a hearing about their rights to access to Medicare? I guess you will never know unless you try.

[drm604]

8. Courts rule on the law.

And the current law does not say that everyone has access to medicare.

[Cleita]

11. Yes, and isn't it a rule of law to challenge it? n/t