“Medicare for All” would save the U.S $5.1 Trillion over 10 years

[u/The-Lucky-Investor]

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/11/30/easy-pay-something-costs-less-new-study-shows-medicare-all-would-save-us-51-trillion

[u/thicckar]

Wow. Do you have any insight into how medicare is viewed by the medical side? Like nurses, doctors and admins?

[u/effdubbs → u/thicckar]

Like most things, Medicare is a mixed bag. I’m not involved with the budget side, so I can’t rightfully comment on reimbursement rates. From a prior auth perspective, it’s great. Medicare “Advantage” is actually not government sponsored Medicare. It is private insurance and it is trash. It is very restrictive and low paying. Yes, you will have people tell you it’s great, right up until they can’t get their procedure where they want or the have to change doctors year after year because their not in network.

Also, Medicare is not free. My husband pays about $450-500/month for Medicare A, B, D, and a supplement. Be prepared. The premium will be taken out of your Social Security check.

[u/bellj1210 → u/effdubbs]

so many people fail to realize that.... i work in housing, and see a ton of elderly on SSI that pull in 1700 a month, 400 to medical off the top, and then rent is still 1700 (that is the average cost of a 1 bedroom in my area)- so the math fails to math- and there are not enough slots at LIHTC properties or spots on voucher programs (and honestly when i see someone on SSI with a HCV and SNAP is sort of hate that they need all those other progams- since they were never designed for that- being on every benefit possible was never how we intended people to retire- but you need everything for a chance to retire without savings)

[u/thicckar → u/bellj1210]

Hmm yeah. Why do you think we ended up in a position where people are reliant on so many programs? Thank you for your work

[u/bellj1210 → u/thicckar]

The race towards a seperatation up the upper and lower classes (destorying the middle class) has been going on for a long time. Many of these programs have not really kept pace with the added costs.

The biggest thing i am seeing is the boomers that never really thought about retirement simply not having a job anymore. Either getting fired or something that just ends their working time (the odd ones are the times where they retire into nothing). They immediately need to rely on those progams- and even decades ago those programs were not designed to provide 100% support.

So person lived life without saving for the future. They hit 70 and simply can no longer work. They go on SSI, the cap is 1991 per month. That is literally on the line for poverty (works out to about 23k per year).

Average rent in the US is over 2k. So you cannot afford to live alone on SSI alone- but often 60-80 year olds do not want to live with roommates- so they go broke living alone- normally wasting what little savings they have so they can live alone as long as possible.

Then they hit any medical issue- and any savings let is just gone.

SO if your entire SSI check is rent- you need SNAP to eat. TANF has lifetime limits that are rather low. So they need to find another way to free up money to pay for anything else.

The HCV program was not designed to allow people to retire. It was to give people a shot to live where the jobs are on a subsidy (large projects are a bad idea- LIHTC make sense for that sort of model. If you dump several thousand people in a large area where none of them have money- there are no jobs for them without making a horrible commute- if you put a building here or there- then you now have the workforce for the lower paying jobs that can actually get to said low paying jobs without a 3 hour bus ride- which in my area 2 hours gets you to the next town over i could drive to in 15 minutes- but i digress)

So you have retirees that are taking up what limited supply we have of these- so instead of supporting lowing income people- we are just further subsidizing peoples retirement. There needs to be a level of heartlessness in these programs so they do not fall apart- imo we should not prioritize the elderly for HCV or any other subsidized program. That is not what they were designed for- so stop taking them from the younger generation that needs them.