So...like, that's not the way health insurance works. Under the ACA, if they have 20 or more employees, an employer cannot refuse to offer coverage to someone 65 and older. Also, straight medicare is not "good enough." This is one of the main reasons why Bernie's M4A is impossible. Medicare, as it stands now, pays only 80% of costs for patients--they are still responsible for 20%. There are still deductibles. There is no straight drug coverage (that requires a separate plan that is billed and managed independently from the federal government.) Medicare does not cover a lot of treatments and services private insurance covers. Medicare also has a lot of freaking problems! There is zero (i.e. 0) chance that our healthcare market can survive on medicare/medicaid reimbursement rates. It's just not possible. Medicare tends to only cover about 80 cents of the dollar in actually provided care. Providers often lose money seeing Medicare patients, and they make it up by seeing private insurance patients. There is no way we can expand Medicare in the way Bernie is proposing, get rid of private insurance, keep reimbusement rates the same, add trillions in new coverage costs (vision, dental, which is not covered by Medicare in anyway shape or form), promise people they can keep their doctors, promise them their level of care will not go down, and promise them they'll be happier than if they kept private insurance. Almost every practitioner in the US is in either private or group practice. Unless we're going to nationalize the doctors (LOLOLOL) you cannot force a provider to accept Medicare/Medicaid. In fact, a heck of a lot don't because it's not worth the red tape vs the reimbursement rates.
The United State's healthcare system is not Europe's. It's not Canada's. Our hospitals are all nearly privately owned, some for profit some not for profit. We offer a level of service to patients that other places do not do...because it is subsidized by the for profit insurance industry. People may whine and moan that they really hate those guys, but people really like the benefits they get from the system. For example, there are almost no hospital wards in the US. In my area, there are no even semi-private rooms anymore. No matter who you are, you get a private room. There is food made to order from a huge menu, not one meal fits all or a single option. I can literally pull one of my kid's hospital menus right now, and there are 20 some entrees to choose from. This is unheard of elsewhere in the world. Patients are not going to want to give this stuff up with little benefit to themselves.
Any change is going to be disruptive. That's perfectly fine. A public option would require some changes to the system, but not to the extent that destroying 1/3 of the economy would.
Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. It also wasn't "pretty much tied."
But if you want another data point to prove that Hillary was a good candidate, I'll point you to an actually "pretty much tied" primary in 2008 where BARACK OBAMA managed to eek out a minuscule win against this horrible, no good, terrible candidate.
Facts are facts.
