Medicare For All - Are We There, Yet?

Medicare For All - Are We There, Yet?

While Medicare is a program which is separate from the Social Security program, the two programs are closely intertwined. In most cases, people enroll for their initial eligibility to the Medicare program via Social Security offices, its teleservice centers, or its online network.

Medicare’s website is www.cms.gov . Here is some basic information about Medicare: http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Medicare-General-Information/MedicareGenInfo/index.html .

Many feel that the Affordable Care Act was a good first step toward universal single-payer health care in the United States. Medicare is essentially a single-payer system but it currently primarily provides coverage only for those who are age 65 or have been receiving Social Security disability benefits for two years.

There is some movement in the House of Representatives for a Medicare-for-All bill. Here are three articles about this: http://www.medicareforall.org/pages/HR676 , and  www.nader.org/2013/11/01/silence-sponsors-superior-full-medicare  , and an op ed piece by Alan Grayson: http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Should-Only-Seniors-Be-All-by-Alan-Grayson-Health-Care-Universal--Single-Payer_Medicare-Medicaid_Single-payer_Universal-Medicare-131201-67.html .

In my December 10, 2013 post, I proposed a one-time early-out Social Security retirement plan to lower unemployment and help younger workers obtain better jobs. One of the stumbling blocks I noted in my post that is keeping older workers from retiring earlier is abysmally low savings interest rates. Another disincentive, which I did not note on December 10, 2013, is the lack of availability of health insurance for those who retire before age 65.

If the House and Senate can get it together and pass a comprehensive Medicare-For-All law that would be great.  However, until that happens, I propose gradually lowering the Medicare eligibility age in five year increments on an annual or bi-annual basis. Lowering the Medicare eligibility age to age 60 in 2014 would permit all those interested in taking advantage of my add two years to your age early-out to also have Medicare coverage, thus making the buy-out more appealing. Another benefit of incremental implementation of Medicare for all is that by only extending to those 60 or older in 2014 there would be time to work all the bugs out that will be present in a full scale rollout of Medicare to and for all. The five year incremental roll out would be close to seamless.

More importantly, passing an incremental five year at a time Medicare-For-All roll out – at least for the first five year lowering segment of the eligibility age - should be a “no-brainer,” something that our congress is capable of quickly doing.