No. of Recommendations: 4
Perhaps a solution. At the moment, everyone over 65 is on a single payer system. Each year, lower the qualifying age by one year and immediately start covering under 5. Then increase the qualifying age by one year each year. Within 30 years everyone is eligible. By about 10 years, people will say we can do it for everyone and the US will join the developed world in healthcare coverage.
The transition to a single payer system is easy to describe. It is easy to identify how we would do it.
The problem is, how do we pay for it?
Medicare is super popular because enrollees pay very small premiums relative to the actuarial value of the policy they get. IOW, the enrollees put in far fewer dollars than get paid out in claims. Enrollees pay about $200 billion in premiums, and receive more than a trillion in medical services.
But you can't do that if you expand the pool. If everyone's in the pool, then the total amount of premiums (whether collected as premiums or as taxes) have to balance the expenditures.
