On Fri, 26 Mar 2010 05:00:54 -0700, busbus wrote:

I have posed this sort of question many times over the past week or so
and I have not gotten any response from the progressives in here. Why
did we have to scrap everything that was already in place and replace it
with a new, EXPENSIVE bill?

Because the simple solution couldn't make it past the lobbyists and those
who finance election campaigns.

What's that solution? Expand Medicare to everyone.

All the bureaucracy is in place - some staffing up would be required, but
no new agency.

Adding the rest of the population expands the base to cover many more
healthy people thus solving the financial problems that Medicare has now.

Costs would be further controlled because Medicare decides what to pay
for a procedure, not a for profit hospital or medical group. With this
healthier membership it might even be possible to increase those payments
somewhat, especially to primary care physician's.

Even more cost control would be achieved because all Medicare supplement
policies must offer the same benefits in one of several categories.
Insurance companies compete on the basis of price. With those healthier
members, costs of supplement policies would go down.

Yes, there's fraud in the Medicare program and it needs to be controlled
better. But people have been defrauding insurance companies and
governments for a very long time - it's not a problem confined to
Medicare.

But as I said, it upsets too many rice bowls.

--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw