If the Republicans have their way and privatize Medicare, it will put millions of seniors at the mercy of health insurance companies and force them to pay $39 trillion more for Medicare coverage than they would under existing law, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). That's why this is a massive windfall for insurers. The GOP budget plan will also shift trillions of dollars in costs onto America's seniors and families. When the program begins, new Medicare enrollees would have to pay at least $6,400 more each year out-of-pocket for private coverage equivalent to current Medicare benefits. And the average Medicare beneficiary's contribution to the cost of Medicare benefits would skyrocket from 25 percent under the existing system to an astonishing 68 percent in 2030, according to CEPR and the Congressional Budget Office.
The Republican plan will enrich insurance companies at the expense of consumers and actually increase the overall net cost of health care by $34 trillion over the next 75 years, the planning period Medicare trustees are required to use. The increased costs are because of the private health insurance industry's excessive profits, obscene CEO salaries and the costs of the bureaucracy it creates to deny care to consumers. These private plan administrative costs often eat up 20 or even 30 cents of every insurance premium dollar compared to Medicare's roughly 3 cents. And in the past few weeks it's become clear that the industry's profits keep going up as consumers are being crushed by ever-rising co-payments and deductibles.
The sheer waste of Medicare privatization is truly staggering. According to an eye-opening report by CEPR's David Rosnick and Dean Baker, the Republican plan will ultimately force seniors to pay $39 trillion more for health care through 2084 than if Medicare were left alone. That's equal to a tax of about $110,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.
What we ought to do is increase our efforts to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse instead of impoverishing seniors, wasting massive amounts of taxpayer funds and giving the insurance companies control of seniors' health care. That's what the Affordable Care Act does, along with other Medicare reforms within President Obama's deficit reduction proposal.
The Republican plan, drawn by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, picks winners and losers in a big way. The winners are big corporations, like the insurance companies and their Washington lobbyists who spend millions to maintain a stranglehold on health care and the Republicans in Congress. The losers are America's working and middle-class families.
The Republicans also give massive tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires like the Koch brothers. To pay for this, they make savage cuts to Medicaid that will destroy the economic security of 60 million people - seniors, people with disabilities, poor families and children. They eliminate Medicare as we know it, and make deep cuts to dozens of programs of services that support America's families, from Head Start to Pell grants that help kids go to college.
Eliminating Medicare, giving seniors vouchers designed to lag far behind actual health care costs, and handing seniors' health care to the insurance companies is just plain wrong. Significantly increasing overall health care costs, as the Republican plan will do, is also wrong.
The Medicare privatization plan is part of the GOP's larger attack on our country's shrinking middle class and the promise of the American Dream: that if you work hard you can expect to have a good job with good wages and benefits, to provide a better life for your children, and to retire with dignity.
Cross posted on the NOW!Blog here.
Richard Kirsch: It's the Prices, Stupid: Consumers Don't Drive High Health Care Costs
Rev. Jennifer Butler: Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand: An Unholy Alliance
Kert Davies: Keeping Up With King Koch
Here are some other things we could do that conservatives don't even want discussed in their decades long zeal to use any means to kill the program -- just as they scheme and plot to end Social Security to enrich Wall Street:
(1) Allow the Federal Government to use its bargaining power to lower pharmaceutical prices.
(2) Allow people under 65 to buy into Medicare as a public option alternative to corporate health insurance.
(3) Lift the cap on FICA taxes so that Donald Trump pays at least the same FICA rate as his maid and use the money for Medicare.
There are others too, but the corporate media only wants cuts discussed.
This is why this one-sided "new politics" with conservatives is pointless as long as they are allowed to define the terms of debate.
Campaign finance reform could end this abuse, but those now in office know better than to kill the goose that lays their golden eggs.
Congress is corrupt, and will remain so, until money is not the single most important determining factor in our election process.
For some reason these "massive tax breaks" to millionaires and billionaires get mentioned in every critique of the Republican plan. Its like the authors want you to believe that either they don't know how these programs function or that they just want to make things up and hope you believe it. Medicare has a dedicated tax. One that already only pays for 40% of its costs. Medicare costs are increasing so fast that in 15 or 20 years they will be as big as the entire current federal budget. There aren't enough rich to tax to pay for that kind of spending. Everyone who works will have to pay extremely high tax rates or the program will have to go away. Yet Republicans are demonized for trying to prevent the program going away while Democrats want to pretend that there isn't a problem. Which group is leading?
Seniors need "something" in return. Be frugal with your health care money if you have any. Just insure the broken fingernail you can afford. Die if you can’t afford real health care. Health care is reserved for the rich. The government is poor and broke they can’t help.
Fears are what you have without knowledge. Knowledge is the antidote to fear. Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first Inaugural Address said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. You may be afraid if you enter a dark room you have never been in before but will not be afraid if you check it out in the light first.
Republicans use fear to attract the ignorant that do not think for themselves and will follow like sheep. There are a surprising number of lockstep fearful sheep in the Republican Party.
Single payer systems around the world provide excellent healthcare. The people are willing to pay for it. They do not want to give it up.
It's easy to see now why the insurance companies are so evil.
People do not understand they give so much to the insurance companies to waste. The premium removed by their employer, deductable and co-pay are not called an evil tax. Republicans say premiums are good taxes are bad. People who understand the private sector know price and cost have no relationship. The price will be the maximum not minimum the market will allow. The government can remove the excess price and minimize the cost through regulation and negotiation on a large scale for all not for smaller groups.
Good health care is a right we must demand from our government (we the people) not from the, for profit private insurance companies. Health care is a shared responsibility. It is time for this country to join the rest of the countries and create a government run, loophole free single payer healthcare system. Government programs that do not work have been broken on purpose by congress and special interests.
F&F back!
Why isn't anyone saying this about the insurance-based health care that most of us have now? Why not implement "Medicare for all" and save this country billions of dollars?
Insurance-based health care is not an entitlement for insurance companies.
The Medicare system works and with only a small percentage of overhead. The insurance companies have a much larger percentage of every dollar going to overhead, especially for salaries for the CEOs. When families pay a lot of their hard earned money for insurance premiums every month, only to have claims denied or to be dropped by their carrier for having the nerve to have a sick child, then it's time to call a halt to their pervasive greed.
Saying that healthcare is a need that results from not caring about your health is totally ridiculous. Tell that to the millions of people who have arthritis. Or maybe you know how to prevent an appendix or tonsils from having to be removed. Got kidney stones? Or how about all the genetic illnesses that people don't even know they have or will get sometime in the future?
Medicare is not a free healthcare plan. Those who currently have it, pay into it. And it can be expanded so that everyone who wants it would pay into it instead of a private insurance company. You seem to be under the impression that I am advocating free health care for everyone when that is not the case.
Republicans pay plenty to insurance companies to waste without flinching but call a penny of that a tax and they say socialism. Here is a secret Republicans must not know. The money they put into premiums is used to treat others.
A person’s value as a human is not determined by their wealth. Republicans can also suffer tragedy in moments pulling away their financial safety net. Is health care only for the rich or is it a shared responsibility of all, available to all?
If you look at the demographics you will find this group votes , more then any other. This group of
55 and older is the driving force of many elections. It would be in the best interest of anyone,
who thinks they are going to balance the budget ,on the backs of seniors. The two things
we should be doing as a country, is educating our young , and taking care of our seniors.
Priorities will be shifted to make way for a different age of wisdom, where common sense, is
more important then the almighty dollar.
You are right in that they will dress it up in talk of defecits and big government to try to frighten people into accepting something that is clearly against their own interests but its basically about redirecting funds to the insurance companies. It doesnt benefit the American people at all as far as i can see. Thankfully i think when the debates begin and people start really hearing about this budget proposal it will be a lame duck, you would have to be extremely angry at Obama to knowingly swallow this poison.
Health care is not a profit making business.
How is it that we are paying twice as much for health care than other countries???
The typical American don't know how???
OR
The typical Republican corporate stooges???
The profit potential is enormous, but first that pesky alternative product, Medicare, has to be eliminated. So, create a budget crisis by giving your friends a huge tax cut, grandfather in the most vocal voters on this issue, and then raise a smokescreen of shared sacrifice and vouchers. Voila, big payday for the fat cats as the rest of us sink into serfdom.
Seriously, what is that? The American people aren't a customer base they are human beings and this nations greatest asset. They should be treated as such.