It Could Be So Much Simpler

Senate Democrats are struggling to come up with a health-care reform bill that expands coverage to millions of uninsured, restrains costs over the long term, and doesn’t bankrupt the country in the short term.

There is an easy and obvious solution to quickly achieve universal coverage, and that is to lower the age to qualify for Medicare from 65 to zero. Then worry about lowering the costs through real reform, like ending the fee for service racket.

Medicare for all is such a simple idea that it’s too bad there isn’t anybody in a position of influence within the government to advocate it. Even supporters of a single-payer plan, which is really Medicare expanded and extended, aren’t pushing it. The political obstacles are just too great.

The insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry are the big players, and lawmakers are crafting a plan that is as much about protecting these favored few as it is about serving the public. Various interests with a stake in health-care reform are collectively spending $1.4 million a day in lobbying fees to make sure the plan that emerges leaves their profits intact.

Our political leaders are too wedded to the special interests that fund their campaigns to propose the common sense solution. And so they struggle on, compromising, placating and hoping for consensus.

Each day that passes increases the likelihood that the Rube Goldberg contraption they are creating will fall of its own weight. If it does, Democrats will be desperate to rescue the issue that will assure their re-election in the 2010 midterm elections.

Here’s the incremental Medicare solution: Lower the Medicare age to 55, and once that proves successful, take it down to 45, which would unlock the job market, freeing employers to hire older workers without having to provide health benefits and freeing employees to change jobs without fear of losing health insurance.

Medicare was designed as a plan for seniors sort of as a safety net so that they could get their medical bills taken care of during retirement. The huge debate in Congress is whether or not to keep Medicare, how to keep it, what cuts to put in and so forth. While this debate rages on, more and more people are asking if there is a reason why Medicare can’t be extended to those younger than 65. Before Social Security became law, elderly people were the most needy and impoverished group in this country. Now, most elderly are more secure, but some are still in a very fragile situation.r

Studies have shown that most health costs occur during the first year of life, and then the last years of life. People between the ages of 1 and 40 are usually healthier and as a result they the have become clients most perferred by insurance companies. “If the government covered everybody up to age 1 and over age 40 and left everybody else to private insurers, the insurance industry would rush to seal that deal.?

“Medicare hasn’t taken over the private insurance market. Insurers are doing a thriving business writing supplementary policies. They don’t really want to be the insurer of first resort. Letting the government pick up basic care is fine with them. Yet they are spending millions on lobbying fees to fight the creation of a public option where a Medicare-like plan would be made available to all Americans.”

Insurance companies contend that a public option would make them go broke and go out of business. The reason that is not accurate is that if the government probides insurance is certainly can’t afford to provide those top of the line policies for millions of Americans. The same as with Medicare and Medicaid, having a public option for thos over 40 would cover mostly basic needs and insurance companies would probably just switch up and sell more attractive plans to supplement what the government is able to provide. You would still go to the doctor of your choice, just as Medicare recipients do now. The only change would be that The government just pays the bill.

This is a difficult issue and it is unfortunate that there are some – or many – on Capitol Hill are overthinking things, rather than simplifying them. If there was a focus of this sort, maybe Congress could get this issue taken care of and move on. But it would take some more simplified approaches and people would have to calm down, come together in a bi-partisan way and just focus on the simplicity of this solution to get this job done and move on.

Some quotes courtsey of Douglas Cohn/U.S. News