The Medicare for America Act, introduced last December by Reps Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) and Jan Schakowsky (IL-09), is a halfway house -- or two-thirds-way house -- to single payer -- and arguably a complete route to all-payer. This bill (summary here) creates a revamped Medicare that auto-enrolls all children born in 2022; allows employers and employees to buy in; and folds in Medicaid and senior Medicare. It preservers a role for private insurance, via Medicare Advantage and the remaining option for employers to provide private insurance.
The bill would effect a less radical and somewhat more gradual transformation of American healthcare than Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill -- but a sweeping, sudden and very expensive transformation nonetheless, undertaking to transform Medicaid, senior Medicare, and long-term care (for which it provides coverage) as well as the individual and employer markets (the latter would be empowered to pay Medicare rates, set at 110% of current Medicare in the new public program). Insurers should be able to ultimately live with it; providers would fight it tooth and nail.
For those more comfortable with more incremental change, the Choose Medicare Act introduced by Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) last April (summary here) has a somewhat similar architecture but does not a) autoenroll newborns, b) fold in Medicaid, c) include long-term care or d) much change senior Medicare, except to add a yearly cap on out-of-pocket expenses to traditional Medicare. What it does do:
The bill would effect a less radical and somewhat more gradual transformation of American healthcare than Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill -- but a sweeping, sudden and very expensive transformation nonetheless, undertaking to transform Medicaid, senior Medicare, and long-term care (for which it provides coverage) as well as the individual and employer markets (the latter would be empowered to pay Medicare rates, set at 110% of current Medicare in the new public program). Insurers should be able to ultimately live with it; providers would fight it tooth and nail.
For those more comfortable with more incremental change, the Choose Medicare Act introduced by Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) last April (summary here) has a somewhat similar architecture but does not a) autoenroll newborns, b) fold in Medicaid, c) include long-term care or d) much change senior Medicare, except to add a yearly cap on out-of-pocket expenses to traditional Medicare. What it does do:
