I’ve paid $212,000 into Medicare. Here’s what I learned about ‘Medicare for All’

Now that the elections are over and the Democrats have swept to power in the House and Senate, one area of focus will be the misnamed “Medicare for All.”  

If Americans understand just what that entails, they’ll want no part of it.

First of all, those not yet on Medicare believe that it doesn’t cost the participants anything. That is so wrong.    

The Medicare program, which began in 1966 to cover people 65 and older, is paid for through lifelong payroll taxes, similar to Social Security taxes. But unlike with Social Security, the benefits are not related to how much you have paid in the program.  

You might think that upon turning 65, you’ll be covered because of the payments you’ve made into the program for decades.

Not exactly. I personally have paid $212,121 into Medicare over the past 50 years. (The government keeps track of your payment history through the Social Security website.)  

Once Medicare coverage begins, you begin to realize how much it actually costs — even after paying Medicare taxes for years.

What’s more, the program’s complicated, on top of being costly. You need a tour of the alphabet to understand it. 

Parts A, B and D each require patient cost-sharing: some mix of premiums, deductibles, co-pays and/or co-insurance. Medigap Part F, supplemental insurance, can help cover the various out-of-pocket costs — but it comes with a monthly premium. For most people this is a mandatory addition to their health insurance planning.

The point is: Medicare is far from free.  

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In 2025 we paid $8,056 for insurance premiums and about $9,000 out-of-pocket. Add the amount deducted from our Social Security of $16,092 and the total outlay was $33,148. And we are still paying into Medicare because I am still working.

The program’s not always easy to use, either. Our first experience with using Medicare came with shoulder surgery needed by the Beautiful Wife. 

Both shoulders needed fixing but only one could be done prior to her 65th birthday, so the second was scheduled for afterward. 

The surgery was planned when we found out her friendly surgeon did not take Medicare. He would perform the surgery, but we would have to pay his fee out-of-pocket. 

Turns out, California doctors have a somewhat lower acceptance rate for Medicare than doctors in other states.

We called our doctor referral source, who is a non-practicing orthopedic surgeon. He knows almost every doctor in the area because he developed surgery centers and had a lot of docs as investors. 

He told me he stopped accepting Medicare years ago because the reimbursement rate did not warrant the financial and insurance risks of performing the surgery. He recommended two top-flight doctors, and we were able to proceed with one.

If doctors do take Medicare, they might charge an annual concierge fee. So beware.  

The truth is, the “Medicare for All” schemed — peddled by Bernie Sanders Democrats and soon-to-be legislators like Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed — is just a ploy to further move us to government-controlled and -administered health care.  

I have been writing on this point for years, and wrote that Obamacare was just a step along the way. 

The left continues to make private insurance more and more difficult to administer and then belittles the insurance companies for their operations. Sanders and crew would prefer to shove every American onto an expensive plan that they control.

There is one goal here: to have complete control over the health care system. Then, we will all receive shoddy, costly, lowest-common-denominator health care “for all.”

Bruce Bialosky, a former presidential appointee, is a certified public accountant specializing in taxes.

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