How to Pay For Medicare for All Without Raising Taxes: Cut the Pentagon’s Budget
With a clearer picture of how Medicare for All can be financed through reducing military spending, voters can debate the merits of a single-payer system without needing to consider any new taxes.
{Another option in the Sanders plan would be a 4% income-based premium paid by households, instead of current basic insurance costs, raising $350 billion per year. According to the plan, a typical family of four making $50,000 would save $4,400 and pay just $844 per year for free-at-point-of-care health care; families under the poverty level of $29,000 in income would not pay this premium.}
Obviously insurance went up again since 2016. As it does each year now at about 15 to 20 %. In 2016 that per year was under $700. This is simple math people! Especially for those paying their own insurance without employer help. I was one of them for 3 years when our employer dissolved our healthcare program, effectively the first year ACA (Obamacare) went into effect.
I went from paying $125 a month to $438 and month the first year. The second year it went up to $548 a month. That's after being quoted a lower number by United Healthcare, closer to my first year premium, who in the second month of that second year abruptly stating they misquoted me forgetting about an Ohio law and increased my monthly payment another $100. Issue one with United Healthcare. Then went on to screw me at the end of the year by refusing to pay for my wellness physical, telling my doctor my coverage had been canceled. This while they were still automatically going into my bank account and deducting the payments to finish the year out. My wellness physical was late September or first of October. Then when I went to file my taxes they only provided me with 11 months of proof of insurance which left me paying a penalty. Costing me several hundred on my refund. My refund was about half of the usual refund I normally get from the fed. Their sad asses finally got caught up in June as they sent me my December month of proof, AFTER THE FUCKING DEADLINE!
Me, single, making roughly 50k a year. I can only imagine the hard times within the example above for a family of 4 at 50k were going through paying theirs out of pocket also. I seen many people in that situation who were paying $1500 or more a month! This isn't rocket science! Do you want to pay $5400 a year or $844 a year with all the red tape and confusion that goes with it eliminated? No surprise billing! I guarantee you you're paying surprise cost in your visits and don't realize it if you're not reading the bills. You might not see it but your insurance company is paying them. Take your wellness physical for example. While you and your doctor are talking, outside the physical itself, he or she is charging for that. Look for a charge ranging from anywhere from $25 to $100 dollars. Depending of if you're seeing an independent doctor or one working for a healthcare group it will defer. If he or she is practicing in a healthcare group it's more likely in the $100 range. Surgery? Your under for the procedure. If your doctor brings in another doctor to discuss, more likely a specialist of some type, that doctor gets an added cut expenditure that can cost up to and most likely several thousands of dollars. Hey! Look what I found. Is that a wart or a mole. Bang! This, red tape, and total inept companies like I dealt with is why our healthcare cost so much. It's a mob like racket in which a lot of it is to sell more sickness than to heal or keep us healthy.
Thank you very much! I'll go with the $844 out of my tax return each year and ask my employer to take out an extra $20 a week to keep getting my usual yearly refund.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.I am all for the reduction of the military budget to spend money on health care, however the real problem is where the cuts are made in the military budget. I am a former military wife, and currently my eldest son is AD AF. Whether you cut that budget by two percent, or twenty, that money is not being taken from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, or any of the other corporations who have contracts with our military, that money will be taken from the soldier and their family. It is reflected in the services available to them. The soldiers get less and less with each passing decade. Things have changed drastically between what my son receives, and what his father had access to. Housing is now being privatized, along with other amenities that the soldier received. Tricare copays have changed. The pharmaceutical formularies have reduced the types of drugs and medical durables to the absolute basics. Family members who are T1 diabetics cannot get decent glucose meters. The list goes on and on.
We may want to see our military budget decrease, but we need to be certain that the money is taken from the right places. There are many projects that billions and trillions of dollars have been spent, and what was purchased is either non functioning, or does not perform as promised. If corporate contracts are canceled, then their is the likelihood of employees within those companies losing their jobs. I know it was a concern for my former husband who worked corporate contracts after he retired and before he landed GS employment.
It is interwoven and all tangled together. I don't think we will make much headway until we can tie CEO pay to a maximum percentage above base labor pay. Then of course you also have pharmaceutical price gouging on life saving drugs. Insulin and Epipens are two examples. I currently do not have insurance. My pension is too high for Medicaid, and I am not old enough for Medicare. When the ACA first rolled out I purchased a silver plan for $50 a month that came with copays, dental and vision. Blue Cross jacked it around and after four months changed my plan to Bronze. My monthly rate went to $127, and I had to completely pay the first $5000 of medical expenses. I decided I did not need to pay that rate just so I could CareCredit. I am thankful I am in relatively decent health, without chronic issues. I hope it lasts, or at least I die before someone can get me to a hospital.
SAMae
Level 5
Oct 27, 2019
1
If we went with Medicare for all right now we could save a little money. Big pharma has their foot in the door on this and spreads rumors that it would cost us 91 to 92 trillion dollars.
DenoPenno
Level 9
Oct 26, 2019
1
They (big pharma) could be right. Or cost proportionally effective to a degree. My problem with M4A is that they and insurance companies are still relatively involved. There's a number of issues that can come out of actually moving to M4A. There's no guarantee that the government is actually going to be able to reduce cost. The end may, and I'm going with, most likely will, end with pharmaceutical companies raising prices to combat their loses. Same as insurance companies.
How did ACA (Obamacare) work out? The first year of that program there was a 20% hike in premiums. A lot of people who needed insurance and the existing conditions stipulation got it. Good for them, I'm actually glad they got something. But it came at a cost to others. Employers across the country dissolved their employee healthcare programs leaving them paying 400% more for their premiums. Employers, as this capital system erodes, use the excuse that they need to downsize to make profits. Which also often leads to attacking employee healthcare. Which is exactly what happened in my case. And right now there are companies that have been falling through the cracks. One of the largest industries, the auto industry, is reporting falling sells. They even have a name for it now. Peak auto, or is it peak cars? Many of my co-workers couldn't afford the insurance, hell I couldn't but needed to, and paid the penalty. So these companies were using us to make up the cost for others to have insurance, some with existing conditions who couldn't get insurance otherwise. Those still on employer programs seen/see their premiums continue to rise to this day to continue paying for such also. Basically what we got from ACA was a shift in people without getting, and people getting either forced to go without or pay substantially more. I call that a manufactured inflation rate that really only benefited the pharmaceutical and insurance companies. Well, for those who didn't see it my way also seen it as god send in which Obama became over glorified within. See, this is where politicians manage to self propel themselves to star status. When the few blissfully revel in their win while others, just like them, are caught under the avalanche, we sell each other out. So Obama benefited also on another bad program while managing to con a vast majority of the country. While I explained this to people on facebook, for the better part of 2 years I was called a liar as I explained my situation. It took the better part of 4 years for people to start getting the word down from those around them to finally understand what ACA actually did. And today we still have some that will glorify this corrupt program as though it was the best deal for the country. A deal that came out completely void of its initial intentions.
I'm worried that we might be going down another rabbit hole for the sake, the same sake, that lead us to ACA.
Politicians:We still have people unhappy with healthcare in our country. It's a daily complaint we need to address each time we get caught on camera or do a town hall meeting. How long are we expected to keep making up stories we all know aren't accurate. The news is out to enough now that it can be done better and cheaper. Pitch forks and tarring are coming. I need this job for the money and power.
So what's to keep them from developing another bad system to quell the masses again for a while. I'm still arguing that you can't develop a good healthcare system while the pharmaceutical and insurance companies are involved and write the laws to that program. They will in turn find a way to continue to support their multi million $ incomes and bonuses. So for those who are in an employer program at work, get ready for a substantial increase in premiums. Or to lose that program. They are going to use us to survive. Medicine cost will substantially increase again. Another manufactured inflation rate to distribute wealth from the working class to support the system again.
How often is it you get exactly what the politicians tell you what they intend to get you? ACA did very little towards its intentional goals.
@William_Mary Mostly it is because politicians do not want you to have healthcare. We can talk about this forever but there is one way of looking at it that is totally fair. We deserve the very same healthcare that Congress and Senate get and the money can be set aside in an insurance program. Call this process by any name that you want to.
It's the obvious thing to do, but you know our government will NEVER cut the war machine's budget in any significant way. It might fluctuate from year to year, but it's going to always have a net increase. Military spending is going to always be connected to national debt in this economy so we can have economic boosts through weapons sales and oil theft etc., and we know that the national debt can only go up every year.
Then we have to get the average American to get past the propaganda the establishment is throwing out about how Med4All or universal single payer would be worse than what we have now because we either can't pay for it or it will take 150m people off of health care (while giving them healthcare - that was a great illusion they're trying to pull off) or that it will cost Americans more money than what we have now. These are basic lies, but average Americans don't research this stuff and get all their information from corporate owned mainstream media that has a vested interest in keeping the system the way it is.
Piece2YourPuzzle
Level 8
Oct 26, 2019
1
The idea of the ACA was great, sadly all the special interests wrote the damn thing - which explains why it's so word heavy and cumbersome.
It's been said before, there is enough money, it's the priorities that are screwed up. Tho, keeping people poor, unhealthy and under educated does have it's advantages if your elected officials have no interest in actually helping their constituents.
The other thing the ACA exposed was just how many and how unhealthy the American populace is. It's a numbers game, if people do not go to a doctor and doctor visits are how you count the number of sick people of course you will have no clue as to the actual number of ill persons. Once everyone can actually go to see a doctor reality sets in and Americans are not as well over all as we thought. Like the numbers game with the unemployed, if you only count those getting employment benefits, well you see where I'm going.
Clearly other countries have figured it out, America keeps trying to reinvent the wheel.
silverotter11
Level 9
Oct 26, 2019
2
There is so much waste in govt spending.. and theft and corruption.. This happens when one spends other people's money.. Stop all this and much good can be accomplished...
Cutiebeauty
Level 9
Oct 26, 2019
2
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