Monday, May 18, 2009

Single Payer, or Medicare For All?

I was derided by a single payer health insurance advocate for saying, "Why call it some new-fangled name like 'Single payer'? Why not call it 'Medicare For All'?" After all, that's what Medicare is -- single-payer insurance for old people. Granted, Medicare has some bells and whistles and such that make it something other than "pure" single-payer, such as optional parts, and the fact that it covers disabled people too, but thing is, that's just a distraction. The reality is that everybody knows what Medicare is, while people are often confused and uncertain about what "single-payer" is.

In short, Medicare For All might not be an entirely accurate term to describe single-payer health insurance for all Americans. But from a PR point of view, we're talking pure gold. Who can diss Medicare without having hoards of wrinkly prunes whacking them over their heads with walking sticks and walkers? Is there a single serious politician, anywhere, who would dare vote against Medicare? Well, yeah, there's dozens of Republican politicians who would happily vote against Medicare, but really, the Republican party isn't exactly a serious party anymore. I mean, we're talking about a party whose leaders are Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, i.e., the intellectual equivalent of gnats. If your party is so shriveled that it relies on morons and big-mouth liars to lead it, it's hard to call your party a serious party...

So anyhow: Yeah, I advocate single-payer health insurance. But I also advocate calling it Medicare For All. Medicare. It's PR gold.

-- Badtux the Health Care Penguin

5 comments:

  1. LOVED the quake twitter you mentioned! Ha! :-)

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  2. Medicare , sigh . At 55 and out of work Medicare is one of my daydreams ; IF Only .....
    an aging w3ski (but not enough)

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  3. both and then some...

    i say single payer when talking to fellow single payer fans,

    i say medicare for all when i know [or think] i'm talking to someone who has a parent or grandparent or great aunt edith who has medicare and likes it,

    i say hr 676 when i'm trying to get people to call/write/fax their congresscritters to support a particular bill [i'm less thrilled with bernie sanders' single payer bill].

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  4. You silly monkey, don't you know that you can't fix this mess unless you make a lot of bombs and kill a lot of other monkeys?

    Our blogs that just a few read damn sure isn't ever going to fix this mess, may as well go camping, that is what I do.

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