Medicare-for-all Fantasy

My question for Hacker is how much will Medicare payroll taxes need to increase to cover the additional enrollees. There is no spoon, there is no free lunch, there is no such thing as free health care.

It's annual enrollment time and the cost of health insurance has gone up (again). Because the cost went up, I looked at all of the options and coverages. I was able to cut my cost in half by choosing a different plan. The new plan doesn't cover as much, but it covers the basics and provides a safety net in the event of a catastrophy. I have greater responsibilities in the event of that catastrophy, but it's a catastrophy. I'm betting that it's not going to happen, and even if it does I'm covered for most of the problem, just not all of it.

So my question is this: I had an incentive to get a plan that is closer to Dr Kling's ideal for health insurance for people under 65. If we don't change anything, won't insurance companies start to charge dramatically higher for "all you can eat" plans and won't that create an incentive for people (like me) to look for lower cost alternatives?

In other words, as long as we don't do things like Mr Hacker recommends, won't the system that we have eventually create exactly the incentives necessary to become more like Dr Kling's ideal?

Is there something that I'm missing?

I was just amuzed by the nightly news (I think it was NBC) which suggested giving people the same plan as congress. Where people will come up with the $1000 a month it costs wasn't addressed.

Arnold,

1) so what if there are unfunded liabilities of $11 tril over 75 years? We pay over $3.5 tril per year in healthcare costs in the US today. Some small % of that is medicare. Put the rest of it into medicare INSTEAD of into private plans and you've covered your liabilities more than 20 times over.

2) The current healthcare system is "the titanic". Costs to businesses and individuals are rising in double-digit percentages every year. We have to get off this boat. You provide no reason why simply putting LESS THAN the $4650 it costs my company to insure my family into medicare wouldn't BOTH fully fund medicare AND reduce overall costs by cuttinng out all the middle men (who add no value to the system), creating administrative efficiencies AND allowing economies of scale (including pooled bargaining power).