Medicare For All Can't Be Done

As a 15 year Medicare beneficiary I can testify to its appeal. With standard Medicare and a supplemental plan one shows his card and by and large that's it. From then on you get high tech care with no direct cost, extremely wide availability of providers and very timely services. The out of pocket costs for the coverage are heavily subsidized and therefore affordable. I don't think any other national plan I have heard of matches it, and I have friends in various countries around the world whom I have quizzed about their circumstances. Once a month I get documentation from CMS showing me the services I have received, the usually grossly exorbitant prices I was charged and  the markedly lower payments that Medicare has approved, assuring me that I have been protected from the storm. Beneficiaries accept the present level of services as they stand and have little appreciation for the waste and inefficiency built into the system. 

What politician of either party worth his salt wouldn't salivate at the thought of providing this benefit to all his constituents. The reason we don't have Medicare 4 All today is that it can't be done. If it could be we would have had it long ago. But the politicians have a big problem. The Medicare system we have now, with all its gross ignoring of the basic laws of economics, is hurtling toward fiscal destruction. The CMS bureaucrats are flopping around like fish in a net trying to discover some new method of service delivery, risk shifting or management technique which would allow them to realize their vision of central control nirvana. 

There is no possible way that Medicare as presently delivered to the seniors can be extended to everyone and they know it. Any attempt would involve unacceptable increases in taxation, as well as major cuts in the availability and quality of providers and services. This would especially be the case if the thing was done wholesale as its proponents advocate so that people could still recall what they formerly had. 

So I think there is time. And as the foundation of our present overall system continues to crumble I think the best idea is to continue widespread efforts to provide working alternative examples of medical care without third party interference, and to vigorously promote and extend the opportunity for individual saving for future medical expenses through HSA's. I greatly fault the Republican legislature for falling down on this end while they had the opportunity.