Insurance for all

The latest political rumor is that Bernie Sanders will run again in 2020 and his main theme will be government health insurance for all. There are basically two ways to do this and we have good examples of both. Medicare is a single payer system. The government runs it and you can choose your doctor and hospital. You show your card to a provider and that activates the government to pay your bill. This is what Germany uses. The next way is called socialized medicine and that is represented by the VA. Here the government owns the hospitals and clinics and all of the doctors, nurses and other employees work directly for the government and this is the system used in England. In both cases wealthy people can get additional services by paying out of pocket. We also have Medicaid which is a government plan for low income people.