Life Without Medicare - Patients

Despite all the consequences of losing Medicare on hospitals and physicians, the most dramatic impact would be on the patients. Medicare was put into place because the over 65 population was a group of people that nobody wanted to pay to care for. Lawmakers then believed that the healthy population could pay for the elderly population in a cost shifting principle.

The only way Medicare could go away is for people to save for the medical care much like they do for their retirement. The common belief is that everyone can put their money in a tax-deffered account and then use it when they turn 65. This idea is ok, but the problem then becomes how do you save money for people who have none. Then, what do you do with the people who did not save their entire lives and then cannot afford care.

None of this will work.

The only idea that I would have is to begin to take the human element out of health care and reduce the marginal cost of care. This includes greater use of computers, machinery, and robotics that can outperform humans. While this may sound like science-fiction, the government needs to defer money from some of their Medicare programs and incentive research in these areas.