302 A Quick Healthcare Fix

It's not like Obama started with the idea of, "Oh, let's make the insurance companies rich." He was a Single-Payer guy, but not one Republican would support him, which forced him to capitulate to a few corrupt Democrats in the pockets of the Insurance industry. Obama probably thought his plan would get changed later, at least I hope he did because what we have is destined to be worse than before. The insurance charade is a scam to make money, especially for the pharmaceutical companies. What we need is actual socialized healthcare, and what we have now only needs a minor adjustment to make it so: just add Medicare for anyone, not just The Old. Only a handful of Republicans would be enough to add this option.

First, let people choose from whatever insurance plans they can afford, but anybody left over gets added to the Medicare roles. We already know what the numbers will be like from Britain's mix of public & private healthcare: the National Health Service, or NHS, Britain's equivalent to Medicare, covers 60% of the population while private insurance are the other 40%. That would triple Medicare's current enrollment but the system is already set up, and expanding capacity is not a big deal: Kaiser Healthcare is a good example. Unfortunately, simply adding Medicare to the options won't be a complete fix because cost containment is mostly on the backs of the doctors, but more serious, Medicare if financed through payroll deductions, and certainly needs to be changed to come out of the General Tax revenue because its cost is devastating to low-wage earners.