Sen. Sanders: Here's How to Cover Uninsured Americans During the Pandemic

[Hortensis]

4. The COBRA system exists mainly to provide insurance for

working people who've lost theirs. The Democratic house bill plans to keep laid-off and furloughed workers on their current health insurance plan at no extra cost to them. Costs are subsidized through COBRA, and all plans would be required by law to provide proper coverage for COVID-related costs.

Unlike COBRA, Medicare's not made for this. Medicare's for retired people who no longer have other insurance. It'd require rewriting the Medicare law to allow temporarily enrolling many tens of millions of working-age people. And it'd create vast complications with duplicate and changing insurances, sometimes requiring people to find new new doctors because theirs don't take Medicare patients.

Oh! -- and since Medicare alone is very inadequate to a medical emergency, like most on Medicare who can, many tens of millions would need to purchase additional policies to augment coverage, or in worst case find themselves with stacks of unpaid medical bills on their breakfast table. Maybe Sanders proposes increasing coverages and decreasing copays for COVID (hope so!) -- but that'd involve yet another complication.

I suspect Sanders is mainly just making a bid for attention by using his most popular catchword. With COBRA in place, Medicare is not needed and doesn't make sense.