Good grief. I havent taken economics since high school. But I understand that the reason Medicare works reasonably well is that it insures only a small subset of the population. As a result, the money that providers lose on this subset can be recouped by shifting costs to the rest of the population that is privately insured.
If you force the privately insured into a Medicare program, there wont be payors to whom costs can be shifted. Something will have to give, and it will obviously be the quality of care.
You could say that Medicare is NOT socialism because it depends on being surrounded by capitalism to work.
Exactly,
I am never so astounded as when I hear people defend systems that DEPEND on a robust Capitalist system... then in the next breath advocate destroying the very Capitalist system that all these programs MUST have to survive.
When there are no longer a robust capitalist system, small business for job creation, and the rich are no longer rich. WTH do they think will happen then. but ofcourse no one evey accused the Commie/fascist/socialist/dums of being intelligent, or for that matter even understands the meaning of UNINTENDED COSEQUENCES.