Options other than big health fund (Feb 28)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
It is a good thing that President Obama is going to try to tackle the increasing costs of health care in the United States, but it seems almost insane for him to want to create a $634 billion fund to add to the nation’s already soaring health care costs.
We already pay more for health care, in total dollars and as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product, than any other nation.
Why do we need to spend more? Wouldn’t it be better to figure out where present spending is being misused, and then reallocate that money?
We have a wonderful model for providing medical care to large numbers of people. It’s called Medicare. It is restricted mostly to those over the age of 65, but why not expand it to cover everybody?
Right away, you’d have a lot of people yelling “socialized medicine!” But that’s rhetoric.
Medicare isn’t socialism. It is funded by a payroll tax, paid equally by workers and their employers.
The money raised goes directly to pay for services or for administration of the program. Beneficiaries also pay premiums, both to the Medicare program and to private firms which sell supplemental policies.
Only about 7 percent of the cost of Medicare goes for administration (except for the supplemental policies). Private insurers, on the other hand, spend three to four times that for administrative and sales costs.
If the government were to expand Medicare, it would give everyone a basic level of care.
The government could also expand private insurance pools. As it is now, insurance pools are relatively small. If we were to make them nationwide, costs of coverage would be less.
Expanding Medicare would require a tax increase on workers and their employers, but most of those folks would wind up spending less than they already spend on private insurance.
