Medicare for All
Medicare is a model program for creating a health care system in the United States that assures good, affordable health care coverage for all.
Unlike Canada and the countries of Western Europe, the United States does not guarantee access to health care as a right of citizenship. As a result, 45.8 million Americans had no health insurance in 20041(that’s over 85,000 uninsured Americans for each Member of Congress). The consequences of not having health insurance are grim: diminished access to care, poorer health and premature death. People lucky enough to have insurance through their job have seen their premiums rise 73 percent since 2000, three times as fast as their paychecks.2
We need a simple, cost-effective way to ensure every American has access to good affordable health care. The Medicare Rights Center believes this starts with expanding Medicare to all Americans who want it or do not have health insurance that is as good.
Medicare has a 40-year track record of offering reliable, cost-effective coverage to older and disabled Americans and giving people the freedom to choose their doctors and hospitals. The original design of the Medicare program – its universality, shared risk, simplicity and dependability – created the foundation for its success. Providing Medicare to all Americans will reduce the high administrative costs and waste of our current fractured health care system, saving an estimated $200 billion annually.3
An incremental step that would permit qualified adults ages 55 to 64 to purchase health care coverage through Medicare would give an affordable health insurance option to many who currently have none. A buy-in plan that targets benefits to the poor and near-poor would go farther to reduce the number of uninsured in this age group, who often have great difficulty securing private insurance.4 Without a public insurance option, 1.5 million adults ages 55 to 64 with chronic conditions go uninsured.5
Permitting Americans to purchase health care coverage through Medicare would give an affordable health insurance option to many who currently have none. Quality health care should be a right, not a costly privilege.
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Read More:
- Medicare For America (PDF)
- Running the Numbers- Vol. 6, Issue 35; August 31, 2006
- Statement on Reports that Medicare is Going "Broke" May 2, 2006
- As Retirement Age Increases, People May Experience Gaps in Health Coverage, March 23, 2004
- Medicare: A National Treasure for Forty Years(PDF)
1DeNayas-Walt, Carmen, Proctor, Bernadetted D., Lee, Cheryl Hill. “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004,” U.S. Census Bureau, August 2005.
2Kaiser Family Foundation, Employer Health Benefits 2005 Annual Survey, September 2005.
3“Proposal of the Physicians' Working Group for Single-Payer National Health Insurance,” Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Aug 2003.
4Johnson, Moon & Davidoff, “A Medicare Buy-In for the Near-Elderly,” Urban Institute, Kaiser Family Foundation, Feb 2002.
513 million adults ages 55 to 65 have arthritis, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, or hypertension. “The Decade Preceding Medicare Coverage,” Center on an Aging Society, Georgetown University, Sept 2003.