Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: Medicare for All a Vote Loser in 2018 U.S. House Elections [View all]thesquanderer
(11,989 posts)...but that scares people, because they don't understand what that means, even though Medicare--which they view positively-- IS a single payer system.
I see it as similar to when people would say things like "We need a G.I. bill for..." something or a something "new deal." It wouldn't literally be the same as the existing versions of those things, but the phrases communicate a concept.
The basic Medicare concept is that everyone's health needs are covered by a government-administered program. And that isn't changing. The details of a new implementation do not need to be identical to the current plan. Heck, the current plan is not identical to the original Medicare implementation, either! Here are changes it has already gone through...
https://www.medicareresources.org/basic-medicare-information/brief-history-of-medicare/
There's no reason they should have had to change its name every time they made those (sometimes quite substantial) changes to the plan.
MFA would be building on the Medicare infrastructure, and improving it. Medicare often pays 80%, where MFA pays 100%. Along with similar improvements in copays and deductibles, MFA negates the need for supplemental or "gap" insurance. And MFA covers things that Medicare does not, like dental. If anything, referring to it as a kind of Medicare program *undersells* it, since MFA does everything Medicare does plus more. But the MFA term is conceptually understandable, as "a government run health insurance system that covers everybody" -- that is its defining feature. People may not know that that feature has its own name, "single payer," but they do understand that that is the fundamental concept of what we call Medicare, regardless of the details, which have changed over time, and will continue to do so, regardless of whether it morphs into MFA or not.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden