Medicare has got its limitations (deductibles & co-pays plus no catastrophic coverage) and plenty of other problems like how it’s destroying the federal budget. Although, some like to think of it as a solution for a single-payer system since its overhead is much lower than just about every private insurer but should more costs be shifted to recipients?

“As a geriatrician, I can’t say I’m surprised,” Dr. Kelley said. “I’m aware of what Medicare doesn’t cover” — eye care and glasses, dental care and dentures, hearing aids, insurance costs, nursing homes and most other long-term care, co-payments for doctors, drugs and hospitals. Families, unlike geriatricians, often are surprised — shocked, in fact — by what Medicare doesn’t cover. For the elderly in this sample, out-of-pocket costs over five years totaled an average $38,000 (the median was $23,000). Original here

It’d pretty much send us back to where it all started, most seniors can’t afford to take on any more costs as PAULA SPAN with the New York Times explains:

When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law in 1965, he noted that its benefits to older Americans were not only medical, but financial: “No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime.”

Medicare is THE health insurance plan for 50 million that want nothing more than to have affordable healthcare. Anymore cuts and there will not be much more that Medicare guarantees.