Question: Privatizing Medicare

Question: Privatizing Medicare - Printable Version

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Question: Privatizing Medicare - samintx - 08-11-2016

Putting Medicare in the hands of the private individual comes up every year. I am against it because I don't think most people will have the money in the bank when the time comes. Then would their be a govt bailout or bankruptsy for individuals?The masses in American are not Savings Acct Savers.

Am I wrong? I am serious in asking. It just looks like a train wreck to let people do the Medical Savings acct. ..save for their future….when they don't have a regular Saving acct plan in their lives.

Re: Question: Privatizing Medicare - rjmacs - 08-11-2016

samintx wrote:
Putting Medicare in the hands of the private individual comes up every year. I am against it because I don't think most people will have the money in the bank when the time comes. Then would their be a govt bailout or bankruptsy for individuals?The masses in American are not Savings Acct Savers.

Am I wrong? I am serious in asking. It just looks like a train wreck to let people do the Medical Savings acct. ..save for their future….when they don't have a regular Saving acct plan in their lives.

On top of your concerns, Suzanne - Medicare is capable, because of its size, to drive improvements in outcomes-oriented care which is good for patients and payers (all of us). If given the option to bargain for medications, Part D would be affordable for seniors. Critics rail on and on about inefficiencies in Medicare, but outside of smaller integrated programs like Kaiser and Mayo Clinic, no provider does better in taking care of patients. The inefficiencies in our healthcare system are primary structural, not regulatory, and Medicare has the heft to push the market forward.

Re: Question: Privatizing Medicare - mattkime - 08-11-2016

'Privatize xxx' is always the solution put forth by those who don't have ideas about how to make government work. Also tends to be an easy way to put a great deal of public wealth into private hands.

Re: Question: Privatizing Medicare - samintx - 08-11-2016

mattkime wrote:
'Privatize xxx' is always the solution put forth by those who don't have ideas about how to make government work. Also tends to be an easy way to put a great deal of public wealth into private hands.

Re: Question: Privatizing Medicare - Pam - 08-11-2016

Privatizing a government function is code for someone wanting to make money. Lots of it. The government is not in the business of generating a profit. Drives those who want to make money off of the same function salivate. I've seen bits and pieces of NASA privatized and guess what? It does not save money, it does not improve efficiency, it does not improve quality of product. Congress critters brag how they reduced the size of the federal government but they fail to disclose that it costs the taxpayer more money. Since they can't also increase budgets other programs gets cut. So the taxpayer gets less for it's money than before. But businesses and investors are happy.

Greed prevents any business, including the so-called non profits from handling medical care. All of it, not just medicare, should be outside the hands of profiteers.

Re: Question: Privatizing Medicare - Speedy - 08-11-2016

Privatization is the Holy Grail of the Republican Party - direct access to the US Treasury.

Re: Question: Privatizing Medicare - mattkime - 08-11-2016

samintx wrote:
[quote=mattkime]
'Privatize xxx' is always the solution put forth by those who don't have ideas about how to make government work. Also tends to be an easy way to put a great deal of public wealth into private hands.

Good idea but I just wonder how much private "wealth" would be in the bank for medical care. You and I might be able to do it but Joe Public? I bet my Plumber would not have the savings ready for a medical emergency because he can't afford Obamacare for his family. Concept looks good on paper but in reality….I just don't know.

Bargaining for prices of medical care is good, however. Part D med rx does me no good. I am paying for your pills!
to be clear, we're entirely in agreement.

people (in general) are not good at long term goal setting and preparing for unlikely but catastrophic events. imo, the more the gov can do here the better....as long as it doesn't get stupid like encouraging people to live in flood plains.

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i'm good at these things and i suspect you are too. but i'm sure you're aware that no amount of moralizing will encourage better fiscal preparedness.

Re: Question: Privatizing Medicare - cbelt3 - 08-11-2016

Replacing a large federal and state bureaucracy that performs this task with an even LARGER and less coordinated batch of corporate opportunists ? Yeah... not a good plan. The mess in data sharing from the ACA alone proves this is an incredibly stupid idea.

And remember... Medicare is an 'insurance' plan. Medical care is not provided by 'government employees' except in the VA.

There are about 65K people working for the HHS department of the federal government. I would guess that perhaps 1/3 of them work on Medicare / Medicaid. I would wildly estimate about 5x that amount total the related state employees. Thus my wildly speculative number says that perhaps 130K people work on Medicare / Medicaid in government.

There are also around 500K people working in the health insurance industry in the US.

There are approximately 850K doctors in the US.
There are approximately 4M nurses (RN, LPN) in the US.
There are around 12M people working in 'healthcare' in the US.
I would expect that approximately 4M of those work in 'office' tasks that involve interacting with health insurance companies, including medicare.

In other words, the total healthcare bureaucratic system in the US employs about 13K + 500K + 4M = 4.63 M

http://www.statista.com/statistics/194229/number-of-health-insurance-employees-in-the-us-since-1960/

http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-health-care-employment/

Re: Question: Privatizing Medicare - Speedy - 08-11-2016

Like the one Bagger's sign read, 'Keep the government out of my Medicare'.

Re: Question: Privatizing Medicare - davester - 08-11-2016

The entire concept is absurd. Health savings plans are useless when something catastrophic like a car accident, cancer or heart attack occur. The costs of medical care in those instances can be vastly greater than any amount a mere mortal could stash away in a health savings plan. An insurance pool is what is needed, and it has been proven that private industry (especially for-profit private industry) is far more costly in providing health care insurance coverage than even the most inefficient government programs around. This is nothing other than a money grab attempt by the moneyed interests.

The moneyed interests (i.e. republican fatcats) are always trying to steal the public treasurey.