Medicare for All is a terribly flawed response to universal healthcare. Problem is people want “universal affordability of health care for all” which is quite different than a poorly designed health care plan for all. Why should people have to accept a crummy health care plan for all just to get universal affordability of health care for all?

Most politicians are idiots when they talk about Medicare for All for two reasons. They don’t understand health care and they don’t understand Medicare. And so they advocate a dumb solution and think they sound smart.

Keeping it simple, government can do four things to make the health care system work better.

First, provide funding for those that cannot afford health care either because of low income or pre existing conditions.

Second, establish price ceilings for health care products and services where the market has inadequate competition to work efficiently to hold down pricing and costs.

Third, pursue fraud on behalf of private insurance carriers that have identified fraudulent practices by providers (the government does this pretty well since it has powers the private sector does not have).

Finally, respond to consumer complaints (not being involved in either delivering care or managing it, the government can be an independent entity reviewing consumer complaints and applying resolving issues as they come up).

The last thing we need is a government dominating the health care system… there are lots of bad reasons for that… but that is a thread for another time…