[ColdNoMore]

Originally Posted by blueash

Those presently on Medicare did not pay enough into it for the care they are getting now. Those getting lifetime corporate insurance did not have their salary lowered enough to cover what it is now costing the company to cover you. The cost of health care continues to escalate beyond any reasonable previous estimate.
Someone has got to pay the bill. You want an MRI for your aching hip? You didn't pay for that. You paid into a system that had Xrays at 25 dollars each. So please stop saying you earned your health care coverage.
The ACA has struggled to get healthy younger people to sign up. It has done well getting sick people to sign up and therein lies the rate increases demanded by carriers. The unenforced penalties for remaining uninsured are too low to encourage those non-compliers.
Think of it this way. If your automobile insurance cost 800/ month and there was no penalty for driving uninsured other than a 10 ticket and no concern with your assets being at risk in an accident, would most people by that coverage?
So the solution is universal coverage, like we have universal fire protection, universal police protection, universal road construction, universal military, and universal clean water. It that a threat to Aetna or BCBS, maybe. But they can continue to offer coverage in parallel with the government option.
If you are so convinced that the government can't run anything efficiently, then it will very easy for Aetna to simply charge the same as the cost of the universal coverage and turn a handsome profit.
Example, if the cost of care of the average American is 800/mo then you the consumer have the option of receiving your coverage via the government option, or selecting an alternative insurer which would then receive that 800/mo from the government for the exact same coverage package with all the same doctors and hospitals and medications.
No networks.
If you want non-standard care, not covered. If you want only brand name drugs, extra cost, but identical for all carriers. If Aetna is so efficient they will love this plan. No adverse selection, just sign up all those who prefer to deal with Aetna and not a government agency.
How does this get financed? Same way we pay for healthcare now. All employers will pay something into the cost of care as a tax as will employees. Some money will come from income taxes, some corporate, some from perhaps a tax on financial transactions.
And it is a myth that the cost of malpractice insurance or defensive medical care is what drives up healthcare.

....