Medicare

[Epsilon Delta]

Ok, all this healthcare talk has gotten me a little confused lately. Granted, I'm not American, but from what I understand, Medicare is a social insurance sort of program for old peeps (65+) and employers pay some small payroll tax to keep it going. So, from an outsider's perspective, it seems kind of curious that Medicare is simultaneously touted as good and people are afraid of a new health care system dismantling it while at the same time saying that anything government-run is a failure. So, we've got a lot of old people here from what I recall and I'm wondering: How many of you are on Medicare, and how many of you are "fairly" satisfied with how it's going? Is it a terrible drag or does it cover most of what you need? Do you even philosophically agree that there should be government health "plan"/"system"/"thing" for people over 65? Just wondering.

 

[veritas]

Medicare is considered a "third rail" program. IOW, mess with it and you're done politically.

I don't know whether the anti-health care reform people philosophically disagree with it. I assume they don't because their main philosophy is self preservation and keeping themselves in office. I would say they are hypocrites for ignoring or misleading people about the facts and ignorant people don't want a single payer system even though they have it with medicare. They conveniently forget that medicare is a socialist program that they have and want to keep.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Wrong Medicare does not pay for itself. And WE the people pay into it also. As a matter of fact the democrats just agreed to cut money to medicare and are planning to do it again.

It is a piss poor system that fails more then it succeeds. It costs more per person every year, rations and cuts benefits each year as well.

Even with every tax payer paying into it, all business paying into it, it is failing and has been since day one.

 

[Ravi]

My father got sick and spent weeks in the hospital on the edge of death. Under medicare, no service was denied him. He recuperated fully.

Most of the old folks are happy with it but they buy into the lie that offering everyone medical insurance will somehow detract from their's.

Another social system that works well is military and federal employment bennies.

 

[editec]

Medicade and medicare are publically run and financed HC systems.

They cost the average American worker about 6% of his weekly paycheck so they're not exactly no big deal.

But 98% of the money taken in goes back to the patients in the form of HC so they're about 23% cheaper (in terms of administrative costs) than private HC insurance which gobbles up 25% of their revenues in admin costs.