Opinion: Does ‘no more copays, no more deductibles’ really represent radical health care reform?
Lost in the shuffle of competing plans for saving health care is the radical call by Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for “no more copays, no more deductibles” as part of their “Medicare for All” plans.
(The plans are actually misnamed, since regular Medicare has 20% copays with no cap — the opposite of what they are proposing — but I’ll leave that aside.)
Doing away with copays and deductibles would represent a complete reversal of U.S. health care policy. In the last decade alone, deductibles which is about, but that is one-quarter of — more than enough to bankrupt a family if illness strikes. When insurance leaves people unprotected against such large costs, it defeats the purpose of having insurance in the first place.
