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Shawn Renee Ernoehazy's avatar

I think that Medicare for all is close but regular Medicare only covers hospital care (part A), outpatient care (part B), and Part D for medications, is a private insurance. Vision, dental, or hearing. Also, it still has a premium attached to it and a deductible. Also, that would mean pediatricians would have to opt in to accepting Medicare. Medicare also has abysmal payment rates and is frequently slow to pay. It's better than nothing, and is accepted more often than Medicaid, but its still not universal healthcare.

NH is for πŸ¦‘πŸ„πŸ's avatar

I’m sure at that moment he had conflicting feelings about you Frank…

Spleen Victoria's avatar

This is how we introduced Medicare to the socialist loons in (checks notes) Saskatchewan. 80 freaking years ago this year!

Tommy Douglas FTW!

Nancy Naive's avatar

Kids stay on Medikids until age 26, then when they graduate and come home from college they can go on their parent’s Medicare. Well, would have worked for me.

GrannysKnitting's avatar

i'd love it if they could sneak in a provision that babies are enrolled in utero (which means that mum gets the care and support she needs to have a healthy baby in the first place)

Old Man Yells at Cloud's avatar

What about pre-utero? Gametes deserve health care!!

GrannysKnitting's avatar

i mean, if we include reproductive health in the whole thing, why not? lol

eo's avatar

This might be a slippery slope to making abortions illegal.

GrannysKnitting's avatar

i was thinking that abortion and prenatal care are two different things and should be handled differently, because both should be basic rights. I was focusing more on the mums that need access to scans and medications and stuff - but sure, go down the worst possible route you can go down, cos why would we aim to have nice things for poor women who want their pregnancy because you automatically equate pre natal health with abortion

Hank Napkin's avatar

Well, what about the children?

John Ranta's avatar

I am so sick of these little kids looking for handouts like a bunch of socialists. This is America land of freedom…and bootstraps. If some namby pamby 6 year old wants healthcare, let them move to Canada. Or Sweden. Or get a damn job! Access to healthcare, my sweet patootie. Why, I oughta….

Terry Southworth's avatar

I'm confused Robyn. You say doctors can refuse Obamacare. How does that work? Obamacare is basically just a broker. I use Covered California to find a plan. I have Blue Shield of California. So you're saying doctors can refuse the insurance of just the provider that goes through Obamacare? But the same provider is accepted if through, say, your employer? Bizzare!

IncognitoTXusLibrul's avatar

The trick is you don't tell the office people it's an Obamacare plan. I live in Texas and have personally experienced this. It's maddening and makes me want to commit serious felonies.

Linda Palmer's avatar

It's called Medicaid

Dorothea is a Democrat's avatar

Make the argument that fascists who call this socialism are fully in support of socialism for the uber-wealthy. Under GWB the American people bailed out the richest banks in the world. They cut billions out of Medicaid but continue to vote for subsidies for fossil fuel and real estate. They support tax loopholes for the rich and protect massive inherited wealth from any taxes, along with ways to shelter their wealth from taxes. This, my friends, is socialism. So, what you have to ask yourself is what kind of socialism you support? Do you want to keep using your tax dollars to maintain income inequality or do you want to use them to give kids healthcare? This isn't hard.

Bagels of Doom's avatar

You can easily shorten this to "fascism is socialism for the uber-wealthy" at this point in all of its variations.

Resource NW's avatar

"... not a sociopath." See, that's 'yer problem reich there.

marxalot's avatar

the factions now being drawn up: Stop Letting Kids Die vs Fuck Them Kids, Shoulda Picked Rich Parents

Les Bontemps's avatar

𝑨𝒔 π’Žπ’–π’„π’‰ 𝒂𝒔 𝑰 π’˜π’π’–π’π’… 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒆 π’–π’π’Šπ’—π’†π’“π’”π’‚π’ 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒕𝒉𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓 π’†π’—π’†π’“π’šπ’π’π’†, π’•π’‰π’Šπ’” π’Šπ’” 𝒐𝒏𝒆 π’˜π’‚π’š 𝒕𝒐 π’ˆπ’†π’• 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒕𝒐 π’…π’Šπ’‘ π’•π’‰π’†π’Šπ’“ 𝒕𝒐𝒆𝒔 π’Šπ’π’•π’ 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒆 π’˜π’‚π’•π’†π’“π’” 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒔𝒆𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 π’Šπ’•β€™π’” 𝒏𝒐𝒕 π’’π’–π’Šπ’•π’† 𝒂𝒔 π’”π’„π’‚π’“π’š 𝒂𝒔 π’•π’‰π’†π’š 𝒉𝒂𝒅 π’Šπ’Žπ’‚π’ˆπ’Šπ’π’†π’….

This is exactly right. Americans seem to be incapable of learning anything from national health programs in the rest of the industrialized world and have to be introduced to it in the tiniest of baby steps. It's really frustrating that the stupid is so strong here.

RepackagedMeatAwareness's avatar

If everyone pays in, nobody pays too much.

VwllssWndr's avatar

Some of it is stupid, but a lot of it is because we treat selfishness as a virtue here.

Sherry's avatar

Now Rump wants to withhold funds for MN and CA. My friend has cancer and her state sponsored health care is most likely partially funded with these monies. I guess he just wants people to die. We all know that it is retribution for being blue states. And they did not want a woman in office because we're "too emotional".

Fuck this regime. And fuck cancer.

VwllssWndr's avatar

He's a eugenicist. RFK is, too.

John Ranta's avatar

β€œHe's a eugenicist.” You say that like it’s a bad thing.

ElderlyLoudCatWomyn's avatar

Sen. Kim's proposal is - adjective - [awesome, brilliant, why-hasn't-anyone-proposed-this-before].

On an allied note, and I know that this might shock people who think the AMA is perfect, this belief that privatized health care is better is just bullshit. Truly, the dinosaurs at AMA spouting this crap need to get out of the way. For example, when CDC developed the Vaccines for Children program (VFC) the AMA and the pharma industry went ballistic about VFC destroying the prices of vaccines. The poor whiny shits in pharma would never make a profit. Anyhow, using unpublished pricing data prior to, and subsequent to, VFC, an unknown economist at CDC determined that prior to VFC childhood vaccine prices were falling. Post VFC, the "public" price led to a stabilization and then an increase in prices paid to pharma. Why? Right off the bat, VFC started vaccinating about 50-60% of all children in the USA and the vaccinated population of children rose dramatically. Pediatric offices started carrying vaccines for all children. Pharma now had a stable demand for pediatric vaccines and were able to adjust supply because, using the birth rates, they were able to forecast demand. Nothing like a stabilized market to create profit.

I'd say that Sen. Kim's proposal would have very much the same effect. PLUS on average, health care for children is incredible cheap as compared with health care for older adults. This might reduce the costs of Medicare for everyone.

Les Bontemps's avatar

Nearly half the US population spends virtually nothing on healthcare each year and about 5% account for half of all spending, mostly for chronic conditions like diabetes, emphysema, heart disease and cancer. There is more than enough money sloshing around in the private healthcare/health insurance industry to pay for Medicare-for-All for the foreseeable future by redirecting insurance premiums/health plan contributions into a single-payer system.

ElderlyLoudCatWomyn's avatar

Are you saying Sen. Kim should drop his proposal?

Les Bontemps's avatar

Not at all. It's an excellent baby step toward a full national health program. I'm just saying that objections based on WHO'S GOING TO PAY FOR ALL YOUR FREE HEALTHCARE, HEHNGGHH? are complete bullshit.

And BTW Andy Kim is my Senator and I personally asked him at fundraisers to address healthcare when he first ran for the House and then again for Senate. I doubt he's responding to my suggestions in particular, but I'm quite pleased to see him take the lead on this since I always got the impression his interests lay more in foreign policy and national security wonkery.

Les Bontemps's avatar

Just another communist Democrat plot to make Muricans dependent on the gubmint.

RepackagedMeatAwareness's avatar

Unlike our uberrich betters who depend on govt fir favorable tax and regulations (they want none) that is totes free enterprise!!!!