Democratic Primaries

To get everyone covered under it would take trillions of dollars. How do you pay for that? And how do you transition from private insurance without putting millions of jobs in limbo or jeopardy?

Furthermore, most people out here who have dealt with Medicare in the real world know something all of you pie in the sky people don't, which is that if your goal is to get rid of private insurance, well, you're going about it in the worst way imaginable. You will not get rid of private insurance with M4A. In fact, it will be as necessary with M4A as it is now, because--wait for it:

MEDICARE DOES NOT COVER EVERYTHING TODAY!

Are you aware of the fact that you can max out Medicare benefits? Or that you must pay 20% of all outpatient care, tests and procedures with standard Medicare? Think most seniors can afford to pay 20% of a $50K knee replacement? Because that's what you have to pay if you don't have a supplemental policy.

That's why anyone on Medicare who can afford it has supplemental insurance to cover the massive co-pays, deductibles, extended hospital stays--and more.

So do tell--how it helps anyone to go to M4A, which would probably need to be financed through higher FICA taxes, and then pay for supplemental policies, too? Where are the savings compared to ACA and private insurance through employers? Because, right now, with how Medicare is set up, there wouldn't be any savings by extending it to the population at large. Not as long as it has so many problems for the limited population it serves now.

M4A is not a workable solution. All of us who have known the reality of Medicare have been trying to tell all of you this for years now.