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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (11208)	11/10/2009 11:37:15 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I had not heard anything about the demise of Part D. When you posted yesterday about it, I tried to find some conformation but couldn't. Could you elaborate or offer a source? There is a lot more here but this will give you a start. Message 26058790 drug coverage • Sec. 1161 (pp. 520-545) cuts payments to MEDICARE ADVANTAGE plans (used by 20% of seniors). ADVANTAGE plans have warned this will result in reductions in optional benefits such as vision and dental care. Message 26082593 Advantage * The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill. Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where MEDICARE leaves off. But President Bush-43 passed the MEDICARE ADVANTAGE program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under MEDICARE ADVANTAGE, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with MEDICARE ADVANTAGE, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues. Presto! Obama solved their problem. He eliminates subsidies for MEDICARE ADVANTAGE. The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medigap, but the AARP -- which supposedly represents them -- will make more money Message 26081084 Advantage What about the proposed cost savings? They, too, are questionable. Most of them consist of reductions in MEDICARE outlays, which, according to this C.B.O. analysis, would save four hundred and twenty-six billion dollars between 2010 and 2019 compared with current plans. Look a bit more closely, and you find that more than half of the MEDICARE savings (two hundred and twenty-nine billion dollars) come from cutting payments to providers of services under the regular program; most of the rest (a hundred and seventy billion dollars) come from changing the way payments are set in the MEDICARE ADVANTAGE program. Does anybody really believe that these savings will materialize? For decades now, Congress has been promising to reduce the growth of MEDICARE outlays, and yet every year they continue to go up. The reasons are straightforward: the population is aging; seniors are politically active; and health-care treatments, particularly for the aging, continue to evolve in complex and costly ways. Message 26080186 Advantage • Expanding Medicaid, gutting private MEDICARE. All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare—now north of $37 trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future MEDICARE spending to "pay for" universal coverage. While Medicare's price controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut that is a sure thing in practice is gutting MEDICARE ADVANTAGE to the tune of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out five seniors private insurance options. Message 26064366 Advantage Second, there are the MEDICARE and Medicaid cuts. By 2019, CBO expects them to reach nearly $100 billion annually, including more than $20 billion from MEDICARE ADVANTAGE plans. That’s a direct hit on benefits for seniors, many of whom signed up with MEDICARE ADVANTAGE because they can’t afford Medigap premiums. The last time Congress went down this road of arbitrary, across-the-board cuts, it was only a matter of months before they were scrambling to restore the cuts. Message 26004297 Advantage