Here is why we need a Medicare buy-in:
Take the case of a male age 62, in Omaha Nebraska , whose Income is $50,000 a year
His only offers of ACA-qualified health insurance are from Medica and Aetna.
With Medica, he can choose a bronze plan that has a monthly premium of $1,242, a deductible of $6.850.
What an awful policy! For a premium that equals about 35% of his after tax income, he gets no benefits until he paid over $20,000 a year. The insurance company is essentially trying not to cover this person- they are just offering the worst policy they can.
The ultimate solution is simple — this man should be on Medicare.
We cannot afford to just drop the Medicare eligibility age down to 60. The tax cost would be politically prohibitive – as Bernie Sanders found out.
However, we can open up Medicare on a buy-in basis for those who need it most, at any age.
Read the attached article, and find out how to do this at a modest cost to beneficiaries and taxpayers alike.
Remember –, this has happened before. In 1965, we passed Medicare because private insurance companies could not produce affordable, reliable health policies for older persons outside the work force.
The same is true now — all that has changed is that the age of need is lower than 65.
I welcome any questions, comments, criticism, et al.
Be sure to check out my website, at http://newlawsforamerica.blogspot.com/
Categories: Uncategorized
I think your example of an extremely high premium and deductible ignores the substantial subsidy this guy would receive. It is likely his monthly premium for this policy would be reduced by as much as 80%.
Nothing makes any sense in the face of a health care industry that is encumbered by such a multi-dimensional array of codependent institutions. The likelihood is that the actuarial basis for the distribution/redistribution of national resources for healthcare is impossible. Fixing the inherently unpredictable character of these institutional relationships must come first. Currently, there is no widely acknowledged awareness of this problem, previously blamed on “barbarous ancestors” by Thomas Jefferson and recently described as “disastrous results” by Elinor Ostrom, when discussing institutional governance separated by @250 years!
“For a premium that equals about 35% of his after tax income, he gets no benefits until he paid over $20,000 a year. The insurance company is essentially trying not to cover this person- they are just offering the worst policy they can.”
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Exactly. We KNOW that, actuarially, medical UTIL risk is tightly correlated with age in the aggregate. In rough round numbers and speaking only of adults, it’s a 60 year proposition, yet we continue to insist on selling coverage in (administratively inefficient) ONE-year chunks, and the for-profit business imperative cannot but be selling to only people who pose nil UTIL risk. There’s no sane way to separately and affordably “price the risk” for older people.
Your personal tax bills allocated to military defense don’t go UP (or down, give that you “have less to lose”) as you age. It’s a given that military defense (and other risk mitigation) needs will always be there.