Let's fix Medicare. Having only recently become eligible for Medicare I was disappointed to find out that after paying for Medicare for my whole working life that I now have to pay $142 (2020) a month to receive Medicare Part B benefits, the benefits you need if you want to be covered if and when you actually go to a doctor. Additionally you have to decide what level of coverage you want by picking from an alphabet soup of plans that vary greatly in benefits and coverage. And then there are penalties for declining Part B and Part D (drug coverage). This entire scheme by our government should constitute as cruel and unusual punishment. It shouldn't be the business of the government to reward Healthcare companies for taking care of it's obligations, nor should millions of Americans whose only income is SS. So what we should do is raise the percentage of a workers paycheck paid for Medicare enough so that when they turn 65 they are completely covered for everything. No additional payments ever. No alphabet soup to pick from. Of course this may also involve establishing strict cost structures for everything including procedures and prescription costs and possibly eliminating the private insurance sector from actually benefiting from Medicare at all (oh the horror). Due note I don't claim to be nearly as smart as all the idiots that instigated this system, but hey, you probably voted for them. Additionally I'm not running for office. Your voice may make a difference.
So much is broken in healthcare from my point of view, I use a lot of it and am on Medicare and SS Disability for an awful injury that occurred
in healthcare.
Although I paid into the system for a long time, and SS pay is proportional to the last few years of employment and is more generous since more was paid in, I know for the Medicare tax, depending on the illness, more can go out than what came in, so I understand the need for premiums to continue, and it's automatically deducted (and used for a bunch of other stuff by the government).
To me, besides such sketchy professionalism and fraud in the system, waste is
huge. I've always noticed that every facility seems to need to outdo the others in design, and fancy diagnostic machines get replaced often in nice facilities and rarely in all the rest.
That's another problem to me, healthcare's class-based treatment. I've had surgery and a stay (where I got that injury) in a very fancy L.A. 'VIP' hospital where normally actors and basketball players go, and I've been to old, run-down County facilities. At the fancy place a very nice nurse brought the newspaper every morning and sat down for long chats, and at the County facilities I felt like I was in the way and unwanted and mistreated there. I believe there are intolerances in a lot of people, but in healthcare they have a particular kind of control, and with a chronic condition, using healthcare as a tool like that is despicable to me (there is also a lot of religiosity in healthcare, and I don't fit in those boxes).
With all this waste gone, proper funding (incl. wealthy paying more but not getting treated better), and more empathy for people with health issues from
healthcare employees, we could have a workable, universal system, but it would require losing the middlemen, profiteering health insurance industry that gets in the way A LOT (like not letting you leave a plan when you desperately need to because of abuse and all the extra costs...).
Healthcare is a
service that has become a financially and medically-controlling monster.
The graph below reveals one part of the waste problem I believe.