Populist Reform of the Democratic Party
In reply to the discussion: Understanding the Corporate Welfare Giveaway known as the ACA... [View all]truedelphi
(32,324 posts)MediCare for all means the government has a program they run, and it is considered a benefit to you the citizen. However there is that age restriction. A person must have trained the age of 65 to qualify.
MediCaid is a program that is offered up to poor people, and there is no age requirement.
You can be a single parent in your late teens getting MediCaid; you can be a fifty year old.
However, what is rarely told to people being offered MediCaid, is this: when you obtain a medical service through the umbrella of Medicaid, you are responsible for the expenses. Oh, not the day the services are incurred, but the day you die.
So if we had MediCare for all, I assume it would be paid by taxes. (Maybe by charging some of the larger Corporations some type of tax - look at how Verizon makes a gazillion dollars in profits and spends not a dime on Corporate tax!)
But when a 55 year old signs up for Medicaid, about six weeks later, they will get a brochure in the mail, letting them know that when they die, the state will audit their estate. So before your double wide can be left to your kids, the state needs to make sure that it gets re-imbursed for the monies that have been spent on you. That amount could d be $ 100; or it could be tens of thousands of dollars.
And that is why before we make the decision to choose MediCaid over MediCare, we need to consider whether we think it better to tax some large corporations rather than making Ma and Pa Kettle end up with nothing to give their kids and grandkids. My thoughts on this are that since every other civilized nation takes care of its people through a situation similar to our MediCare without forcing the citizens to re-imburse them, then we should too.