The Republican plan to destroy Medicare will make American costs and health outcomes worse. Despite Medicare covering the most expensive part of the population, it is much more efficient than the rest of the American health care system. Japan and other industrialized countries have what amounts to Medicare for all. No other nation has the crazy patchwork system we have, which includes employer-sponsored private insurance, means-tested insurance, and individual private insurance, in addition to government-run Medicare.
Ryan proposes to make the patchwork system even more of a hodgepodge, with less coverage and higher costs. He wants to end Medicare as we know it and, instead, simply give seniors and people with disabilities fixed cash stipends to fend for themselves, unprotected, on the private market. But before the enactment of Medicare, many seniors and people with disabilities couldn’t get health insurance at any price. And those that managed to find an insurance company willing to cover them paid much higher prices than other Americans.
If we want a health care system in this country that provides everyone with access to the best medical care possible at the lowest possible cost, the way to achieve that is not to end Medicare, but to expand it. That, indeed, was the idea of the program’s founders. They saw Medicare as simply a first step, to be followed soon after by expanding it to include all children, and then more and more of the population, until the United States had Medicare for All.
Ryan proposes to make the patchwork system even more of a hodgepodge, with less coverage and higher costs. He wants to end Medicare as we know it and, instead, simply give seniors and people with disabilities fixed cash stipends to fend for themselves, unprotected, on the private market. But before the enactment of Medicare, many seniors and people with disabilities couldn’t get health insurance at any price. And those that managed to find an insurance company willing to cover them paid much higher prices than other Americans.
If we want a health care system in this country that provides everyone with access to the best medical care possible at the lowest possible cost, the way to achieve that is not to end Medicare, but to expand it. That, indeed, was the idea of the program’s founders. They saw Medicare as simply a first step, to be followed soon after by expanding it to include all children, and then more and more of the population, until the United States had Medicare for All.
