Universal coverage: building on Medicare and employer financing.

Universal coverage requires a strategy to sever the link between insurance coverage and employment in order to build a more stable insurance base. Universality also will require subsidies to make coverage affordable. Given these realities, the authors evaluate different financing proposals--employer and individual premium mandates and taxes--in terms of equity, affordability, and administrative and political criteria. An expansion of Medicare offers an insurance alternative that takes advantage of existing administrative structures of national scope.