Medicare part E - if it isn't going to happen between President Obama's election and his first midterm, it's never going to happen.

Brian Sassi is not making any friends with his support of this.

OK, that wasn't his intent but as I have been arguing for quite some time....a health care system such as we have in the US is doomed to failure because we let insurance companies provide health care to us during our younger, healthier years and when we get older and less healthy shift the burden over to Medicare (taxpayers). Because of the recession younger, healthier people are deciding to go without health insurance and leaving the somewhat older folks who still think they need it stuck with much higher premiums.

Sassi said, in one interview, that the risk pool is being drained of the younger, healthier people and that is what is causing the huge increases for older customers.
Why are we then surprised when Medicare is not solvent??? It is so obvious that we NEED TO put everyone in Medicare, young and old, healthy and sick and thereby create a risk pool large enough to absorb the costs of caring for our elderly and disabled while saving the rest of us a bundle at the same time. The fact is, we pay for Medicare AND health care insurance, why not eliminate the health care insurance cost and just pay Medicare???
Sure, our Medicare taxes will increase but NOT NEARLY AS MUCH AS THE COST OF PRIVATE HEALTH CARE INSURANCE!!!!
This would save us big $$$$ and boost the economy with a huge influx of spendable money allowing consumers to consume instead of feed greedy health insurance companies and the multi-million dollar CEOs.
Eventually all this will happen anyway or else the country will just go broke so pretend it won't and I'll still be around to remind you that I told you so when it does.

"Brian Sassi is not making any friends with his support of this."

Sassi isn't really supporting it, but his argument makes the case for it unintentionally on his part.

I just saw this. It was brilliant. The guy is going to be looking for a job in the morning, I think.

I just want one person to make a cogent argument that a system such as ours is sustainable. We have this ongoing debate about health care but I have yet to hear any opponent of Medicare for all make a good argument for the sustainability of any other system long term.
The battle over health care has been poorly fought on the side of the Dems and progressives. It should have been an argument forcing the opponents of reform to defend the status quo and force them to argue that it is even sustainable. IN reality they simply can't win such a debate because the fact is the present system can't continue indefinitely and every year we delay reform is a year of less growth in the overall economy due to the amount of GDP going into healthcare which translates to unemployment and stagnant or even falling wages.
Our argument should be that Medicare Part E means growth, jobs and a sustainable economy, and that continuation of the status quo means unemployment, lagging growth, declining incomes and eventually national bankruptcy.