Posts filed under ‘Medicare’
Wake Up, America!
In a column in the Washington Post on August 24th, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele purported to be worried about the damage health care reform will do to Medicare.
Really? Talk about raiding Medicare: Can you say “Medicare Advantage”? The last Administration privatized Medicare in 2003 with the Medicare Advantage system that lured private insurance into the program by paying huge subsidies of more than 14% on top of what the traditional, public Medicare program is paid for the same services.
Can you say “Part D”? The last Administration created the incomprehensible Part D prescription drug program that made Medicare drug coverage available ONLY through private plans and actually wrote into law a PROHIBITION against Medicare negotiating prices with drug companies. Talk about a boondoggle for Big Pharma!
The Bush Administration created a windfall for private insurance and pharmaceutical companies – all at the expense of the cost-effective public Medicare program, seniors, and taxpayers.
Come on, America, Wake Up! Don’t buy into using health care reform to create another welfare program for private insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Haven’t we given them enough by giving them Medicare?
Medicare, We Hardly Know Ya
44 years ago Medicare was enacted into law. All of today’s dire warnings about a public health option – socialism and government barring the doctor’s door – were made in opposition to Medicare. Despite such opposition from “conservative,” leaders, including Senator Bob Dole, Medicare passed.
Before Medicare, 50% of everyone 65 or older had NO health insurance. Now, as a result of Medicare, almost all older people are insured. Medicare, which is national, government-run health insurance, succeeded in insuring older people where private insurance failed. And, until the Bush Administration privatized Medicare with the extraordinarily subsidized private “Medicare Advantage” and Part D plans, Medicare was remarkably cost-effective too. It’s private Medicare, not the traditional, public program, that’s bleeding taxpayers of billions of dollars.
Medicare has been a success, fiscally and morally. It took on the job of insuring health coverage and care to people that private insurance had abandoned. Since 2003, on the other hand, private Medicare plans have cost us all tens of billions of dollars that went to support the private insurance industry, not to providing health care. In addition, private Medicare plans have too often engaged in marketing abuses and restrictive coverage practices.
As Paul Krugman recognizes in today’s New York Times, people with Medicare love it. They do not want government to fool around with the traditional program. Ironically, these are sometimes the same people who worry that a public health care option will cause long waits for health care and government invasions into their private medical decisions. They, and their family members, (which accounts for pretty much all of us), forget that the traditional Medicare program is a public health insurance option.
Hello, America, meet Medicare: Our 44 year-old public health insurance option that provides care to all its enrollees, anywhere in the country, and that has provided health and economic security for millions of older people, people with disabilities, and their families.
Happy anniversary, Medicare. Thank you for showing us what a true public insurance program can offer.
Mr. President: Listen to Your Doctor!
The (President’s) doctor orders Medicare for all. He’s right. If conventional wisdom is correct, and a single payer system is not “on the table,” surely the President and reform leaders must at least insist on a public health insurance option.
If the goal of health care reform is to provide coverage for all as cost-effectively as possible, a public health insurance plan MUST be included in any health care reform package. We can’t afford to be scared again by dire warnings about Big Government. Big Insurance costs a lot more than a public program and it helps people get health coverage a lot less. Ask anyone who really knows about the public Medicare program and private Medicare plans.
Support a true public health insurance option! It’s best for people who need health care and most cost-effective for taxpayers. Isn’t that what the President and his doctor ordered?
Medicare for All?
This morning I showed my brand spanking new Medicare card to my 27-year old uninsured son, Patrick.
He looked the card over carefully and said “I wish I had one of these.”
A New Day Dawns for Oversight of Private Medicare Plans
With the advent of the Obama Administration, we have seen a new philosophy towards the private insurance plans that contract with Medicare under the Medicare Part C (Medicare Advantage) and Medicare Part D (prescription drug) programs.
No longer will the Medicare agency “partner” with the Medicare Advantage and prescription drug plans “to design and provide a variety of high quality health care products…..” as the agency said in 2009. This Administration is not about partnering with the private entities that it pays to provide health coverage to Medicare beneficiaries. Instead, Medicare will be looking closely at how these plans operate and what they do with the billions of federal dollars they receive. For example:
• Medicare has told current and potential Part C and Part D plan sponsors that it will no longer accept (during the application process for 2010) the incomplete applications, blank documents and spread sheets, and late filings that it has accepted in past years.
• Medicare announced that it is reducing Medicare Advantage payments for 2010 to account for “up-coding” by Medicare Advantage plans. Plans “up-code” the disease codes for their enrollees, i.e., claim that their enrollees have gotten sicker, in order to receive higher payments. The problem is that the private Medicare Advantage plans claimed an increase that was actually greater than the increase for the Medicare population.
• The President’s budget, released today, May 7, 2009, includes a focus on private Medicare plans and additional funding for greater oversight of the Medicare Advantage and Medicare prescription drug plans, as part of the overall effort to reduce fraud, waste and abuse in the federal government.
These changes are good for the fiscal integrity of the Medicare program, for the older people and people with disabilities who are served by the program, and for all Americans. What a breath of fresh air.
Public Support for a Public Plan Option
The Kaiser Family Foundation released its April polling information last week and guess what? The most popular reform option was to expand Medicare to the uninsured aged 55 – 64. That reform is strongly favored by 53%, and another 26% of those polled say they somewhat favor such an expansion.
A public plan option is favored by 67% of those polled, though only 34% are strongly in favor of a public plan. Additionally, 57% of people questioned thought having a public plan option would cause the private plans to do a better job.
Do we think that Congress will listen?
What Kind of Help is That?
Medicare beneficiaries are fighting back against decades of delays in processing benefits that have caused them to make hard choices between health care and other necessities of life.
66 year old Narcisa Garcia, a resident of Pennsylvania, lives on $695 a month, just about 75% of the federal poverty rate. Paying her Medicare Part B premium reduces her tiny income to $599 per month. Yet Ms. Garcia should not have to pay her Part B premium; she is one of millions of low income Medicare beneficiaries entitled to help from one of the programs that pays for Medicare cost-sharing. Although she is eligible for benefits from Pennsylvania going back to November 2008, six months later, in April 2009, she is still paying her Part B premium. Some people may be able afford to float loans to the federal government, but not those living on less than $700 a month.
On April 24th, Ms. Garcia and another Medicare beneficiary, together with two advocacy organizations filed suit against the federal government and the state of Pennsylvania claiming that the harmful and illegal delays in processing enrollments for benefits denied them their rights under federal law. Narcisa Garcia, et al. v. Charles E. Johnson, et al. 2:09-cv-01747 (AB) E.D. Pa. (Complaint filed April 24, 2009).
The programs to help low-income beneficiaries have existed since the beginning of Medicare and Medicaid, in 1965, but were beefed up in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Medicare cost-sharing increased significantly. For decades, they have suffered from serious delays in processing enrollments that leave people footing their own bills for months or even years after they have been found eligible for the benefits.
The Center for Medicare Advocacy and the Philadelphia-based Community Legal Services are representing the plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to recognize the case as a class action, to declare the government’s practices illegal, to require that benefits are provided promptly, to notify beneficiaries of delays in processing, and to notify beneficiaries that they might be entitled to a refund of back benefits. They are asking, in other words, that the programs do what they are supposed to do: help people.
From the Desk of Judith Stein….
Update: Real reform still possible
Apparently the President will support use of the Senate “Reconciliation” process to move health care reform if the super-majority of 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster can’t be garnered to pass a good plan. We heard this last week from a senior senator – he hoped a bipartisan vote would be possible, but indicated that certain principles need to be met by any health care bill, and that Reconciliation would be considered if those principles would otherwise be sacrificed. Amen to that.
Let’s not accept “something’s better than nothing” again! That mantra helped pass the 2003 law that gave us private Medicare Advantage, Part D, and windfalls for corporations – at the expense of Medicare participants and taxpayers. Been there, done that. This time we need a good plan with a solid public option that puts people above profits.
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April 24th
CMA Health Policy Consultants’ contacts in DC indicate that a public option in health care reform is in jeopardy. Is it possible that after all the problems Medicare has had with private plans, and the plans’ exorbitant additional costs, that we will actually let corporate greed trump the interests of sick people and taxpayers once again?
CMA Health Policy Blog 