Replace Obamacare with Medicare for All

For those delusional day dreamers among you who like to luxuriate in utopian fantasies, here's a way to address the impending loss of Obamacare: Simply make Medicare available as an option to everyone.

Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tennessee Headquarters

The insurance companies had a major fit when this was proposed during the negotiating for Obamacare because they released:
1. People who have Medicare really like Medicare
2. They are much happier with Medicare than any of the commercial insurance they had before Medicare
3. Faced with competition from a superior product, these commercial insurance policies would be dead in the water within months.


So, in face of the idea of the greatest good for the greatest number, Congress passed the only law they had the votes for, which was to do good for all the insurance companies, their stock holders and employees, with no "government option."

Doctors fear universal Medicare because then they would be faced with a monopoly who could drive compensation for doctors down, and many younger doctors fear they'd be driven into bankruptcy by their student loans if they cannot recoup their investment with high fees.

Corporate Offices Gym, Cigna

I once calculated the total number of dollars spent on administration of insurance and payments to doctors in the United States.  I forget the exact number, but when I divided the dollars earned by health insurance company executives, and employees right down the line to the clerks who code the insurance bills in doctor's offices, the resulting number, divided by all the doctors who actually practice medicine in this country, it came out to $500,000 annually, if you paid every doctor exactly the same, pediatricians and neurosurgeons, rheumatologists and heart surgeons. 


There would likely be some grousing by surgeons, who make three to five times what internists and primary care physicians make, and who feel they deserve to make more, but likely 90% of practitioners in the country would be thrilled to get $500,000 a year for practicing medicine.

Cigna Campus

The problem would be what to do with all the unemployed health insurance people. There are, by my estimates, about 15 million of them, all told, whose jobs completely or partially are driven by commercial health insurance. They do not do anything productive, with respect to actual patient care. They are simply moving the money.  But what would you do with all those people?


Before electronic medical records replaced paper charts, the medical records departments at hospitals and doctors' offices employed lots of people, and took up whole floors and much space. Now all that is gone. And we don't miss those medical records people at all.


If we eliminated the health insurance people, they would not be missed by patients or doctors.  They really are superfluous.