{"id":2449831,"date":"2019-10-13T22:24:01","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T04:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/medicare-for-all-is-the-answer\/"},"modified":"2019-10-14T07:35:43","modified_gmt":"2019-10-14T13:35:43","slug":"medicare-for-all-is-the-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/medicare-for-all-is-the-answer\/","title":{"rendered":"Medicare for All is the answer"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/02\/facebook-thumbnail-1200.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The description of the Valley Health Alliance appears to be a great step forward to reduce healthcare expenditures and insurance premiums.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">However, the problem I have with this approach as well as other similar alliances that have had mixed results around the country is the following:<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">In an attempt to lower costs, these alliances add another layer of administrative expense to health care. Even if they are not for-profit, someone has to pay the salaries of the people who will negotiate with private insurance companies and who will deal with how patients, doctors and hospitals utilize health care.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Essentially, companies will pay money to the alliance which will contract with an insurance company so they can pay the providers. These insurance companies have a 20-25% overhead to pay their workers, advertising and make a profit for their shareholders.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">So how about instead of your employer paying $20,000 a year for your family health plan, they give you that money as salary?<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Even if you pay half in taxes to fund Medicare for All (the middle-class tax increase the press talks about), you still pocket 10 grand.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">This works because Medicare has a 2% overhead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">This hardly seems like an evil socialist plot.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND Letter Name\">Dr. Michael Marek<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND Letter Title\">Aspen and Fort Lauderdale<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/opinion\/letters-to-the-editor\/medicare-for-all-is-the-answer\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The description of the Valley Health Alliance appears to be a great step forward to reduce healthcare expenditures and insurance premiums. However, the problem I have with this approach as well as other similar alliances that have had mixed results around the country is the following: In an attempt to lower costs, these alliances add [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2449831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-23 19:29:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley&#039;s Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2449831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2449842,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449831\/revisions\/2449842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2449831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2449831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2449831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}