USA TODAY EDITORIAL: …Baby Boomers might be slowing down, but as they age, the behind-the-scenes debate to reform Medicare is getting more vigorous. Some suggest that the glut of beneficiaries born 1946-64 — what demographers call the “pig in the python” — will pass and we can merely nip and tuck at the program’s rising costs.
In fact, the huge demographic bulge is being followed down the snake’s gullet by something even larger: increasing life expectancy.
Better medical care and longer lives are forcing a reconfiguration in health care policy. The number of Medicare beneficiaries today is rapidly approaching 50 million… (more)
EDITOR: They got it ‘bass ackwards’. We should lower the age qualifying threshold to birth and create a Value Added Tax to fund the program.
Thus in one stroke the USA would have a superior health care system and reduce our costs by a third, bringing us in line with the best among the other advanced economic nations.
Let me again try to understand this proposal. Your idea will result in healthcare costs declining from 1/6 of GNP to 1/9 of GNP a 1/3 decrease). By healthcare costs you re including medicare, medicaid, and the VA.
For some reason you fail to close the loop by not telling readers the VAT percentage, nor mention any CO pays or deductibles, nor any impact ( if any) to provider reimbursement rates, nor the impact of a VAT on the poor. I am guessing your case would be better made by including such in your proposal.
As for me, I am quite skeptical. Some may even describe your proposal as getting the camel’s nose into the tent.
EDITOR: Our neighbor to the north, Canada, finances health care via the Value Added Tax. You are correct that it tends to be regressive, since it is a tax on all levels of production. But then again the current funding of the non-governmental portion of health care is also regressive. For example, the highest paid executive pays the same as the lowest ‘blue’ or ‘gray collar’ worker in most firms.
The important thing is when you do away with health care companies in exchange for the ’single payment’ via a governmental agency, then at least 25% of the cost of health care in the USA, consumed by administration costs, evaporates.
Of course huge and profitable institutions will fight reform tooth and nail. Moreover, some doctors and dentists who are able earn much more than say $250,000 a year they otherwise would be paid, will also resist any reform.
Keep in mind that physicians start in practice owing a huge amount of debt. As part of health care reform, we advocate providing full tuition for post graduate studies in the fields of medicine.
If you study the attitude of the bulk of professionals who work under a single payer system, they are happy not to have to worry about what they are earning and able to devote themselves solely to the practice of their profession.
“The healing of America” by T. R. Reid is a New York Times Bestseller and is a pleasant and easy read. One becomes acquainted with various approaches to health care through the developed world. They are all better than what we have.
Lastly, given that what we advocate is far more universal than what we now have, it would be more accurate to say we are only leaving the camel’s nose outside the tent.