Paul M. Craig: Medicare hooey

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Published: 05-05-2025 12:25 PM

The deviously named “Medicare for All” health care reform arises in the odd idea that the old folks are sucking up free health care that the needy and envious younger Americans should also have. Medicare was established as health insurance for older Americans by Title XVIII of the Social Security Act Amendments of 1965.

It provides that working Americans pay a percentage of their wages to fund this new federal health insurance program. Then at age 65, people begin to automatically receive health care through Medicare Part A hospital coverage — the major health care expense for older Americans.

But what about office visits to doctors? Now, also at age 65, comes a new cost; a new insurance premium called “Medicare, Part B.” Retirees must sign up for this coverage and pay a monthly health insurance premium which is normally deducted from Social Security benefit payments.

The costs, and purposeful deficiencies, of elder American health care don’t stop here. You might think that after paying Medicare A taxes all your working life, and now being hit with a new Medicare B insurance premium, that your access to fully paid health care would be, as they say in moviedom. a “wrap.” Not so; there are many more fleecing-of-the-sheep scenes to be shot.

Neither Med A nor Med B cover all the costs supposedly “insured” by these two parts of the government program. You soon discover a whole range of costs, restrictions, exclusions and sundry other expenses that are outside of Med A and B insurance coverage. To cover these excluded costs (well, sort of) you now have to pay private supplemental insurance premiums.

So, a new horror show of restrictions, exclusions, coverage limits, denied claims, etc. begins. “Medicare for All” is glib political vote-sucking jibber jabber.

What we really need is frank and fair discussion, with accurate news media reporting, to fix our inadequate health care system which has already impoverished too many Americans.

Paul M. Craig

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