Over the next couple of days, I’ll be going through the Center for American Progress’s recent proposal for a significant Medicare reconfiguration and expansion that they call Medicare Extra for All.
There is no chance that this will be enacted policy before 1/21/21 That is irrelevant. Excluding post office renamings, there are few major bills, with notably rare exceptions, that involve multiple trillions of dollars over several decades that have an immaculate conception and a complication free birth. Instead, bills that go through Congress and signed into law are often the subject of multiple iterations of white papers, counter-white papers, critiques, revisions, consensus committees and then another round of revisions. I see this proposal as part of that process. And thus, figuring out what they are trying to do, how they are trying to do it and seeing where there are potential rough edges is a valuable exercise.
Today, we’ll go through the introduction, international comparisons and the Legislative specifications sections.
Right off the bat, the first five words are “Health care is a right….” This is a framing attempt to get the discussion onto the means of universal coverage instead of a long and not particularly productive discussion on ends and means. This is a universal coverage proposal and not necessarily a single payer proposal.
A closer read of Medicare Extra for all Part 1Post + Comments (14)