As you should know by now, the GOP wants to "privatize" Medicare by handing it over to private insurance companies. They think it will be more efficient.
Of course, that disregards the fact that the administrative cost of Medicare is somewhere between 2% and 5% of the program,[1] while health insurance companies run somewhere between 15% and 30%.[2] But that's not my point.
My point is that go walk into the waiting room of an average family medical practice. Do that over several days.[3] Make a note of the population in the waiting room. Who will you see, on a disproportionate basis, in those waiting rooms?
You'll see seniors. Sure, it's true that there are seniors who don't consume much in the way of medical care, until they are very old and they contract a case of pneumonia or have a heart attack and die fast. But as a population, seniors are consumers of medical care. Which means that it will not be profitable for health insurance companies to insure seniors.
Not unless health insurance companies do one of two things: They will either drastically raise the insurance rates for seniors, forcing most of them to opt for "hit by a bus" level coverage, or they will increase premiums for everyone.[4]
The second option is interesting for another level, for that is what insurance companies do: Spread the risk across the entirety of the premium-payers. That is also the basis for the "individual mandate" part of President Obama's health insurance reform, the thing that Republicans proposed in the 1990s, that is part of the Massachusetts medical insurance system (a/k/a Romneycare) and so despise today.
Which means that the GOP has just tried to enact a form of Obamacare for seniors.
Pass the popcorn, this should be fun to watch.
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[1] One could argue that a couple more percentage points, dedicated to fraud investigations, could reduce overall costs.
[2] Part of that is profit, which is why they can pay their CEOs seven and eight-figure salaries.
[3] Disregard pediatricians and, to a lesser extent, OB/GYNs.
[4] Let's not kid anyone, they'll do both.
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Seniors are less than 13% of the population, but consume over 50% of the health care, mostly in the last ten years of life. What that means is that you would need to charge 12.7% of the population 9% of the GDP of the United States (at 18% GDP healthcare spending) in order to fully fund their healthcare. Clearly that's not going to happen, that would leave nothing for, like, *food* and such.
In other words, the GOP answer to healthcare cost is to take that last ten years of life away from seniors. It's the Soylent Green solution, where you might as well tell oldsters to report to the local pet food canning factory as soon as they have their first major illness in old age. For those of us with empathy and a working conscience, it is horrifying to consider. But it's a great solution if you're lizard people with no empathy and no conscience. Then conservatives get upset when we call them lizard people with no empathy and no conscience... well. What can I say?
- Badtux the Numbers Penguin
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