Why Health Care Reform Will Be Good for Medicare Recipients

Many of the protesters showing up at this month's town hall meetings on health care reform are old enough to be on Medicare--or they're pretty close. They're also old enough to know better; here we have beneficiaries of a gigantic, successful federal health insurance program screaming at their legislators to keep the government out of health care.

Let's skip past the obvious irony and contradictions at the town halls, and instead focus on a substantive question: Would the health reform bill now taking shape really pose any kind of threat to Medicare recipients? Do seniors have a reason to feel threatened?

Absolutely not.

While we don't yet know what the final health reform bill will look like, the key components of importance to Medicare can be found in HR 3200, the bill passed by the House of Representatives. A dispassionate look at the bill suggests that health reform actually will be good for the Medicare program.

On the surface, the bill may look somewhat threatening because it calls for $538.5 billion in Medicare spending reductions over a 10-year period to fund overall reform. But while it sounds like a big number, the cuts being proposed won't hurt beneficiaries.

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Comments

[jeffrey678]

Doctors receive a percentage profit for each medical test they perform, more tests more profit = waste. Doctors are prescribing expensive brand name drugs because they will get paid vacations from drug companies . Doctors can increase their income by requiring expensive products and procedures.This needs to change. In my state they actually had to create a law that required Doctors to prescribe Generic drugs if a patient asked for it instead of expensive brand name drugs.

[Oregonlady]

Certainly HR3200 is less likely to harm seniors than are other current proposals (except the fine HR 676, the Conyers single-payer bill). However, those $538.5 billion in Medicare cuts over 10 years come to approximately 9 percent of Medicare's $600 billion annual budget. Even if a third of this comes from removing Medicare Advantage HMOs, much must come from "bundling" Medicare payments to promote "efficiency" by doctors and hospitals. Bundled amounts will be determined by average-region costs of treating a given illness. Without going into the disparity between what the Dartmouth Health Atlas actually shows and the claims made by Obama-Orszag and legislative committees in citing it as evidence such cuts can be safe, simply consider the obvious: Doctor Jones has a Medicare patient with condition X; in the name of efficiency, Medicare will pay Dr. Jones only amount N to treat him, instead of, as previously, per visit; will the patient will receive as much care as before? Or consider hospital H, with budget "trimmed" to encourage efficiency; will "waste" be cut back, or the janitorial and low-level staff--persons we however rely on to keep down MRSAs? No, as long as healthcare monies must support profit-taking insurance businesses, we cannot pay for the healthcare we need--but we can have excellent health care, through a generous, single-tier, national health insurance program, the same for ordinary citizens and power-brokers alike--through, in fact, the Medicare-for-all plan in HR 676.

[bluevase]

The seniors are right to be worried -- and right not to trust the government. Billions of dollars in cuts to Medicare cannot be done without hurting health care for seniors.

[itolduso]

I live in Florida- the 'holy land' of seniors - and I believe that billions of dollars can be cut from the program that everyday is touted in commercials and advert inserts in magazines down here...... where 'medical supply companies' convince healthy, active, mobile seniors to purchase a 'mobility chair' (electric wheel chairs) with "100% of purchase price paid by Medicare". Let's restrict those $7,500. 'go carts' to those that REALLY need them as opposed to those that just want a 'fun' way to get around the mobile home park. And why do Bras for cancer patients cost $500.00 more than ordinary bras? Is it because Medicare pays? (My mother has breast cancer-I'm not picking on the patients) but it's obscene to charge $460.00 extra for adding a 'pocket' & pad to an ordinary bra. These are just two examples of 'price gouging' by medical supply firms...there are hundreds more. Those can easily be cut without 'hurting health care for seniors'.