Issue could be key in next year’s elections
The overall theme of the ‘Medicare for All’ option being bantered about right now is simple: Abolish private health insurance.
Proponents want to sweep away the current healthcare system, ripe with inconsistencies and confusion in favor of a single government-run insurer that would cover everyone.
But the disruption to our way of life is a consideration as well. Private insurers employs approximately a million Americans, while covering many times more. The stock interests of these businesses are cornerstones of many American’s retirement accounts.
Indeed, such a change would mean an enormous shakeup in the United States economy, which is just one of the reasons it’s unlikely to yield such a cut-and-dry solution. Indeed, nothing close to a precedent for such a move exists in American history, and experts are at odds over whether the change would result in increased or decreased costs over time.
In Canada, for example, residents have similar access to doctors, but people can still purchase private insurance in order to cover benefits not offered by the government system, including prescription drugs.
According to the New York Times, about one-third of American currently ensured by Medicare and about 80 percent of those using Medicaid utilize a private insurer.
The only thing for certain is that there are many layers to this issue, and no solution forthcoming in the near future.