Medicare is for seniors, those w/ kidney failure & certain youth w/ disabilities, Medicaid is for those w/ low income (poor people), families and children, pregnant women, the elderly , and people with disabilities, regardless of age. In some states, Medicaid has been expanded to cover more low income folks.

I can tell you why it hasn't here in FL. Our governor(Rick Scott) is a Republican & wants the ACA to fail, so he refuses to expand Medicaid here, plain & simple. He also refuses to create a state exchange, so we have to buy on the federally run Marketplace. The excuse is that they are afraid of future costs, but it would've been fully funded by the federal gov't for (I believe) the first several years, then drop to partial funding after that.

Sadly, many people here who do not make enough to qualify for subsidies have been left out & cannot purchase any health insurance, even though financially, they do qualify for Medicaid. And unfortunately, this state of affairs is true for a number of other states w/ GOP governors as well.

IOW, politics. I call it BS.

Medicare only covers 80%. Then you need supplemental insurance for the rest or lose everything if something big happens. Medicare also pays providers squat. I doubt it could support the system as a whole. And, providers, pharmaceutical and other companies want to make money!

If Medicare pays providers squat, why these cases of fraud, bilking Medicare for million$ & more?

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/22/1-billion-alleged-medicare-fraud-money-laundering-scheme-leads-to-florida-arrests.html

There is talk of lowering the age of eligibility for Medicare. Right now it's 65.

FWIW, my mom & her best friend (87 & 92 respectively) rely on Medicare to cover their medical costs. My mom got treatment for breast cancer all paid for by Medicare w/ no cost to her. If not for that, it would have certainly impoverished her to get the care she needed.

Also forgot to add that our state legislature is also controlled by the governor's party, so no going around or against him.

>Medicare also pays providers squat.

Hm, in that case why have I so often heard doctors' offices here that take Medicare no problem refusing to accept patients who have opted out of Medicare totally in favor of private insurance?

The Medicare fee schedule shows an office visit at a facility such as a hospital pays $51. A non-facility private practice office visit pays $71.

People who work are required to pay into Medicare. I imagine we'd all have to be required to pay more into Medicare if we wanted to cover everyone, right? So essentially we'd all be required to buy this government mandated insurance whether we wanted it or not, wouldn't we? And it seems you'd have to require every working person to pay otherwise you'd end up with the underfunded problem we have now where the covered population doesn't include enough healthy people.

The people I know in other countries who have a national health plan also have private insurance so they have more options. So I might end up paying for my current employer plan plus this government plan as I do for Medicare only I'd have to probably pay a lot more if we want to cover everyone.

I would love to have the choice to buy into early Medicare. But the public option was shot down by the insurance lobby when the ACA was being formulated. Bringing younger, healthier, premium paying people into Medicare would strengthen that system.

According to Medicare's 2016 fee schedule, for a digital mammography screening, they pay the facility $100 and pay the physician $35 to read the study.

MRI of the brain, without dye. Hospital: $156. Physician: $76.

If the American public is going to be forced into having health insurance whether they want it/can afford it or not, I think Medicare For All is a far better way to go than the mess with ACA we have currently.

I was very much in favor of the single payer system when the politicians were deciding which way to go and extremely disappointed with the one they arrived at. Many are paying the vast majority of their yearly health care costs out of pocket (due to high deductibles) along with barely affordable premiums, it's no wonder the middle class is shrinking at an ever increasing pace.