Relating to the Nov. 7 information article “Biden administration seeks additional crackdowns on personal Medicare plans”:
Medicare Benefit plans are a part of our damaged privatized insurance coverage health-care system. Points embody proscribing physician entry, requiring preauthorization for remedy, plan choice errors, aggressive insurance coverage firm advertising and marketing, excessive deductibles and co-pays, elevated hospital and physician administrative prices by coping with a number of insurers, and revenue incentive to limit care. A whole system change is required, no more regulation, which doesn’t work.
Single-payer common well being care, comparable to Medicare-for-all, would offer complete health-care protection for all Individuals, together with these eligible for Medicare Benefit plans, with no premiums, deductibles, co-pays, physician entry restrictions, or insurance coverage firm’s necessities and limitations ensuing from revenue motivation. And it’s fairly cost-effective. The price of well being care in the USA is nearly double that in different superior international locations, with restricted entry and poorer high quality. Single-payer well being care has proved to be more cost effective in different international locations. It should wring out the redundant and wasteful administrative prices of the insurance coverage market and supply negotiating leverage to stabilize pharmacy, physician and hospital prices. Main research, together with in extremely revered medical journals, have reported estimated financial savings on total health-care spending of as a lot as $600 billion per 12 months if Medicare-for-all have been adopted.
Ken Lefkowitz, Medford, N.J.
The author, who designed health-care plans for main companies and is a member of Physicians for a Nationwide Well being Program, is the writer of “Medicare for All: An Financial Rationale.”