I heard something that made sense to me today. Someone said, "why not just remove the requirement 65 and over from Medicare?" I have Medicare and it works fine. My wife had a serious disease costing over $18,000 to get under control and I paid a total of about $1600. Of course I have it backed up by AARP sponsored United Health Care, which is very affordable. I think most would be happy with Medicare; it has the advantage of being a successful program already set up, and it does not shut out the insurance companies because most would want the extra backup to cover situations that Medicare does not cover. The only thing I would add is payment for yearly checkups. This would actually save money by catching problems early when they would be easier and cheaper to treat. Is there a downside to this? Probably, but presently I don't see one.