HealthBlawg

David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog

  • About
  • Archives
  • Podcast
  • Press
  • Awards/Reviews
  • HIPAA
  • HCSM

Medicare for All

April 27, 2007

Sen. Ted Kennedy and Rep. John Dingell filed their Medicare for All bill this week (again) — more than two years after Kennedy started talking about it.  The general idea is to phase in coverage for all over five years, save $300 billion plus annually by reducing administrative costs, and finance the other $300B in annual costs mostly through increased payroll taxes on employers and employees.  Employees can stick with their existing plans, or can opt in to federal employee health benefit plans.  (Get the same health care coverage as the President!)

Considering that Kennedy swore off single payor a while back, this is an interesting approach — not technically single payor, but mighty close.

The big questions for me are:

(1) Does this plan really result in universal coverage once it’s fully phased in? (The answer might be clear if I were to read the bill once it’s posted, and not just the on-line summary.)

(2) Would a plan like this preempt state experiments like the one underway here in Massachusetts?  Is it definitely better than the plans it might preempt?  (See my thoughts on two other national plans vs. Massachusetts plan in a recent CommonHealth post.)

(3) Are the anticipated savings really there?  (For example, the $300B figure includes $150B savings attributable to universal EHR adoption; is that realistic?)  While the notion that Medicare is more efficient than private sector insurance companies strikes some of us as counter-intuitive, the federales seem to keep a lid on administrative costs.  For a discussion of administrative costs and whether we’re comparing apples to apples, see Jason Shafrin’s post and the comments following at Healthcare Economist.

(4) The biggest question, of course, is this: Coverage is good, but how about cost control?  (Even without this proposed influx of covered lives, the chunk of GDP consumed by Medicare continues to increase.)  The summary offers preventive care (as well as administrative savings and EHR-related savings) as a means to help control costs.  To my mind, these are necessary, but not sufficient.

— David Harlow

Related Posts

  • Massachusetts universal health care coverage: employer perspective

    I presented an introduction to the MA universal health care law a few weeks ago…

  • Affordability standards adopted under Massachusetts universal health care law

    The Connector has adopted affordability standards which will lead to health care insurance coverage for…

  • Universal health care coverage on the agenda

    While some have seen the Massachusetts universal health care experience thus far as an experiment…

Filed Under: CMS, Health care policy, Health Law, Massachusetts, Medicare, Universal Health Care

« Consumers could use some guidance more than choice
Blawg Review #106 and the pathology of motorcycle racing »

Trackbacks

  1. Health Care BS says:
    April 28, 2007 at 12:07 am

    Medicare for All? No Thanks.

    Via Healthblawg, Ted Kennedy and accomplice John Dingell are promoting a Medicare for All bill. According to Senator Kennedy’s press release, the legislation would morph the current Medicare program into a cradle to grave project:
    Their bill will ext…

Threads

Follow me on: Threads

Mastodon

Follow me on: Mastodon

HIPAAtools

Hipaatools

The HIPAA Compliance Toolkit

The Walking Gallery

The Walking Gallery

Quick Links

  • Home
  • Categories
  • Archives
  • Podcast Interviews
  • HIPAAtools
  • HIPAA Compliance
  • Health Care Social Media
  • Speaking
  • In the Press
  • Blogroll

David Harlow

David Harlow

HealthcareNOW Radio

  • Subscribe
  • Contact
  • Book Me: Speaking
  • About
  • The Harlow Group LLC
Copyright © 2006–2025
HealthBlawg is a publication of The Harlow Group LLC. See Copyright notice and disclaimer.
Fair use with attribution and a link is encouraged. Click for more on David Harlow.
[footer_backtotop text="Back to top" href="#"]