What Is ‘Medicare for All’? Your Questions Answered
Air, water, food, shelter, and medicine is required for every person. Why is the “all in” risk pool so hard to understand or apply? Because of profits. The sad thing is there is money to be made legit here. There has to be. Payroll, costs etc.
To me the “everybody in” idea is what any system needs, single payer or not. Public, private or a blend. No program can run on inadequate funding. Rapacious profits are neither required nor desired.
Here is what a health policy must have to truly be a “single-payer” or “Medicare for All” program.
A single, mandatory risk pool
At the core of single-payer is the promise to cover all care, for all people. This means that all are included—but nobody can take their contributions and go play ball elsewhere. This is what’s known as the “universal risk pool.”
A “risk pool” is the pooling together of many peoples’ insurance money. Not many people need very expensive healthcare at once—50% of healthcare spending comes from 5% of the population. Many people who need expensive healthcare will only need it for a short period of time (e.g. a car accident or hip surgery). As a result, the larger the risk pool grows, the more able it is to sustain itself (at a significant discount relative to our fragmented private-insurance model). If rich people or people who are currently not in need of healthcare are permitted to, say, take their contributions out of the risk pool and spend it on a private option, the risk pool weakens (and, in turn, becomes less able to negotiate lower prices).