[From the diaries by susanhu. This was suggested by Matt Santos on ‘West Wing,” and it struck me as a brilliant solution for real Americans.]
Washington, DC: Today, as President Bush focuses on health care in his State of the Union address after ignoring it for five years, Senator Kennedy will put forward real health care reform that would give quality affordable health care for all Americans. America’s health care system is the most economically inefficient in the industrial world. Kennedy’s plan would fix our fractured system of care, by extending Medicare to all Americans, from birth to the end of life, while allowing any American who wishes to stay in their current employer-sponsored plan to do so. Under Kennedy’s bill, employers can tailor their health plans to provide additional services to their employees that wrap around Medicare coverage.
While doing a search yesterday, I accidentally came across this article in the American Chronicle and was floored. How come we haven’t heard a peep about this?
Here’s the basic proposal:
The “Medicare for All” plan will make health care coverage available to every American by expanding the Medicare program to the under 65 population. To promote competition and choice, enrollees will also have the option of choosing any of the plans offered to members of Congress, the President, and Federal employees.
Costs will be reduced by administrative savings from moving to a Medicare-style financing system, by bringing modern information technology to health care, by improving quality of care, and by rewarding health care providers based on performance, not just on the number of procedures performed. International competitiveness and job creation will be enhanced by reduced costs and by shifting some of the burden of financing from business contributions to general revenues, as well as the healthier and more productive work-force that will result from universal health insurance coverage.
To ease the transition to the new system, coverage will be implemented in phases. In the first, coverage will be extended to individuals 55-65 and to children under 20 years old. In later phases, coverage will be extended to all other Americans not already covered under Medicare.
The article reads like a presentation of the proposal and is loaded with details, like eligibility, benefits, and savings both to the government as well as to corporate America.
This should be shouted from the rooftops. This is what the Democrats need: real proposals to flesh out the criticism. Go check it out.
Crossposted on DKos
[Update]: I changed the title to catch a few more eyes