Democracy Now Healthcare Roundtable
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ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Well, the problem with the $900 billion number is that it actually means that we don’t have enough to subsidize coverage for folks. If we did a robust public option, we’d grab $80 billion. It now seems like that’s off the table. So we need to find the money to have enough subsidies for working people.
Why is that? Well, let’s do the math. So you have a family of three at 300 percent of poverty. They earn $55,000 a year. They spend $15,000 in taxes. They spend $14,000 in, you know, rent. They spend $20,000 on childcare. They spend $7,000 on food. And guess what? They’re already in debt. If you add in healthcare costs, which then they’re—even with the subsidies, they’re really in debt. And if they have a medical catastrophe, even with the caps—which is great that they’re adding, in health reform, caps on your maximum out-of-pocket exposure—you’re going to be in debt at the end of the year. And that’s the problem. They don’t have enough money to actually subsidize people, unless they really drive down insurance costs. The only way you really drive down insurance costs is through a public plan, or the other alternative is not even try to do this complicated thing, building on the current employer-driven structure.
DR. OLIVER FEIN: Right. And what we propose is essentially a Medicare-for-all program, right? Obama had a choice, really. He could have decided to build on what we have, correct. That’s what he said he was doing. But he went down the pathway of subsidizing what I think is a defective product at this point: private health insurance. He could have gone down the pathway of taking Medicare, probably the most popular health insurance program in the United States, and saying we should spread that to all people in the United States.
And if he had done that, we feel that studies show that you wouldn’t have to increase the cost to the middle class. The overall cost to the system actually would be a savings of close to $400 billion per year, mind you. And we’ve got that money, for instance, because we’re spending $1 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan, OK, per year. So we have the possibility, it seems to me, if we went in the direction of a Medicare-for-all program, to really make this affordable to all people in the United States.
Now, Anthony Weiner from New York—
[more at link]
Why is that? Well, let’s do the math. So you have a family of three at 300 percent of poverty. They earn $55,000 a year. They spend $15,000 in taxes. They spend $14,000 in, you know, rent. They spend $20,000 on childcare. They spend $7,000 on food. And guess what? They’re already in debt. If you add in healthcare costs, which then they’re—even with the subsidies, they’re really in debt. And if they have a medical catastrophe, even with the caps—which is great that they’re adding, in health reform, caps on your maximum out-of-pocket exposure—you’re going to be in debt at the end of the year. And that’s the problem. They don’t have enough money to actually subsidize people, unless they really drive down insurance costs. The only way you really drive down insurance costs is through a public plan, or the other alternative is not even try to do this complicated thing, building on the current employer-driven structure.
DR. OLIVER FEIN: Right. And what we propose is essentially a Medicare-for-all program, right? Obama had a choice, really. He could have decided to build on what we have, correct. That’s what he said he was doing. But he went down the pathway of subsidizing what I think is a defective product at this point: private health insurance. He could have gone down the pathway of taking Medicare, probably the most popular health insurance program in the United States, and saying we should spread that to all people in the United States.
And if he had done that, we feel that studies show that you wouldn’t have to increase the cost to the middle class. The overall cost to the system actually would be a savings of close to $400 billion per year, mind you. And we’ve got that money, for instance, because we’re spending $1 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan, OK, per year. So we have the possibility, it seems to me, if we went in the direction of a Medicare-for-all program, to really make this affordable to all people in the United States.
Now, Anthony Weiner from New York—
[more at link]
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- Congress, Healthcare, Dennis Kucinich, Public Option, 7 more
