I Get It Now, Medicare for All is the only solution for viable Health Insurance System

My Dr friend that I have previously cited had the idea that the transition for the employees and companies that are in the private insurance space could be managed by simply lowering the age people could sign up for Medicare by one year for 47 years until it was 18.  And he would leave the employee insurance plans in place.

But that didn't convince me that the transition issues were insurmountable.

But then I read the following letter to the editor this morning.

"How many times must it be demonstrated that health care cannot be treated like any other market commodity before our legislators get the point? This article once again confirms that affordable health care can’t be delivered using a private, for-profit system."

"One cannot make a profit insuring sick people. Therefore, health insurance companies are most profitable when they avoid sick people while continuing to collect premiums from healthy customers. When this does not work, raising prices is necessary to keep profits up."

"But health insurance premiums are already unaffordable for most of us. That is why the young and healthy are not buying. The only way to make health care affordable is to have everyone paying into the pot in proportion to their income while eliminating the unnecessary expensive middleman: health insurance companies."

"Must we wait until only the billionaires will be able to afford health care before we join all the other industrialized countries and switch to such a government-funded single-payer system (Medicare for All)?"

ELIZABETH R. ROSENTHAL

Larchmont, N.Y.

The writer is a dermatologist.

Remember that Medicare Part D is the private insurance space within Medicare.  It is also for healthy people the most affordable component of Medicare.  So it is likely that younger people would migrate to this part of Medicare keeping people who work in the private insurance space employed.

Meanwhile, the entire health care system is moving to networks and other things to try and control costs.  Only by having Medicare negotiate with Drug companies are we going to stop price gouging like the epi-pen debacle.  And where is the FDA in approving generics on this product?

But the real problem is new techniques that require a lot of RnD keep being found for people to survive things they wouldn't have survived previously and they want to survive and they want those treatments.  And the capital that funds that RnD needs a return.  I don't have a solution for that unless you simply use costs as a rationing tool and only the more well off will get certain treatments.  This is already the case within Medicare.

But that is a separate issue from how do you make basic health insurance affordable for everyone (or as affordable as it can be).

I now support Medicare for all.  I have no idea how you get that through Congress.