John,

>If you do away with Medicare, you'll have to load seniors with their 50% healthcare costs into that "insurance". IOW you'll still be paying all those costs with no lower-risk members to offset the cost. Sounds like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic to me.

We actually did this in 2006. Before then we had goverment healthcare and private healthcare funding. We got rid of the goverment funding, now everyone has a private insurance. However, here is the catch, the government is paying this insurance to a certain amount, depending on whether you're employed or not. If you are, your employer has to pay for a part as well.