A commenter at Megan McArdle's place points out that, by White House standards, Medicare is junk coverage that should be outlawed like meat infested with e. coli. Medicare is essentially catastrophic coverage strictly for expensive hospital stays. Of course many seniors also want coverage for expensive, frequent office visits and prescriptions, and there is coverage for that. Voluntary coverage. Voluntary, private coverage for which they pay their own money to insurance carriers in the private market.
We can't just let people make up their own minds about whether to carry only catastrophic coverage, right? That would be like letting them drive a Ford pinto. And we can't expect them to pay for their own coverage beyond the catastrophic level, right? And yet, as the commenter points out, what Medicare makes optional for vulnerable seniors, Obamacare mandates for young invincibles.
In other news in bizarro-policy world, maternity care is now mandatory for the middle-aged but optional for women under 30 years of age, who are the only ones now legally permitted to buy bare-bones catastrophic coverage.
6 comments:
It makes a kind of sense if you're Julia. The point of the program is to force the rest of the country to hold down your costs. But you -- privileged Julia -- have choice. It's only everyone else whose lives must be organized to make sure your choices are easy and cheap.
We can't just let people make up their own minds about whether to carry only catastrophic coverage, right?
We especially can't let seniors make up their own minds about any policy choice--they're old. This was the Progressives' primary objection to the Ryan proposal to give seniors vouchers roughly equal to their current Medicare premiums and let them shop on the open market--with the existing Medicare policies expected to be, at the worst, the second least expensive of the marketed plans.
Eric Hines
Here is a good site for finding a painting for your current mood.
Here is mine-
http://frankfrazetta.org/viewimage.php?loc=ffcolr35.jpg
Tex sounds like she's feeling more like this:
http://frankfrazetta.org/viewimage.php?loc=ffcolr32.jpg
Maybe, but knowing Tex, and suspecting Conan, I think those chains and plates are about to become weapons.
Eric Hines
Grim,
I was hoping you would pick one :-)
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