aspaceman55
Member
I have an idea to fix the healthcare issue.
We already have medicare for the elderly. We have medicaid or some form for the poor.
take 10% of the military budget and cut it out of that total and free it up. Using 2015 numbers taken from wikipedia, thats roughly 63 billion.
Now, take medicaid. expand it to be for everyone. roll medicare into it so its all one program. Name it whatever you want. Both of these are already federal level programs, so leave the one program a federal level program and let the govt negotiate prices like they already do with those two.
Use that 63 billion to help transition and add it to the yearly budget going forward. Then, people can choose to either pay into a private healthcare plan like they do now, or into the medicaid plan. That way its not a new tax on people since everyone already pays into medicare/medicaid anyway and people are already used to paying premiums anyway. That premium would instead go into the public plan, or continue using whatever private plan they wanted.
I imagine I left out all kinds of things, but as I don't know everything needed, I just went with a general idea.
This is called single-payer healthcare. It was what Obama probably wanted to do originally. Republicans hate this notion. Hate it so much they would all burn the capital building down before even talking about such a bill.
It's pretty favorable in polls though, so maybe someday.