No. of Recommendations: 9
Krugman today:
The Case for a Medicare Buy-In Option
Mandates vs options: The good, the bad, and the feasible
paulkrugman.substack.com - The case for a medicare buy in optionThat said, a rapid transition to Medicare for All looks unlikely. Bear in mind that such a transition would require higher taxes, so that it would be necessary to persuade people that these taxes would be more than offset by lower premiums. And this would be a hard sell.
But there is an alternative: A public option, better described as Medicare Buy-In. Allow individuals, and possibly more important, employers, to sign up for Medicare benefits, paying actuarially fair premiums to Medicare reflecting the health status of their workers. There’s no obvious reason a public option would be any harder to implement than payments to the Medicare Advantage plans offered by private insurers, which are also supposed to be actuarially fair.
And if a Medicare Buy-In option were available, many people and many employers would surely take it. It would be a safe choice, with lower administrative and marketing costs than private insurance.So...why not?
ACA-like premium tax credits could be used to ease the cost for the less well off. Medicare would get a pool of younger, probably healthier people.
