Keep your Government Hands Off of My Medicare!
One of the scariest things that I can think of for anyone who has ever had to deal with a private health insurance company is to think ahead to when you will be 75 or 80 years old and contemplate that you might have to battle with such an entity about a claim or referral denial.
Yet such is Paul Ryan's plan -- to provide future Medicare recipients with money (I'll avoid the sensitive term vouchers) which they will then use to go out and buy their own, private, insurance policies.
That scares the bejesus out of me; if you have any sense it should scare the beyahweh out of you; and I suspect it scares the bezeus out of a lot of people. I am not at all surprised at the blowback the House Republicans have gotten by passing such a plan.
Medicare can't be perfect. Nothing is. But I must say that for a government program it seems to generate little griping. Maybe I read in all the wrong places, but have you ever heard of any serious protests by seniors against Medicare? Does your parent or grandparent complain bitterly about those Medicare bureaucrats? If so, I don't know about it. And I get AARP magazine and actually look it over.
Only those in the mindless thrall of ideology would be eager to turn a successful and popular government program over to an industry whose goal of maximizing profit must inevitably tend its policies towards insuring (heh) the death of any older person who gets seriously sick.
Even more bizarre is the plan's attempt to limit government expenditures on Medicare by defining away the problem. It does this by limiting the amount of money handed out to seniors using a formula that has nothing to do with the rising costs of premiums or the medical inflation rate.
The problem is that unless we, as a society, are willing to push grandma off a cliff then someone has to pay. The money has to come from somewhere! I fail to see any benefit to society to have this burden tossed from one agency of the federal government and taxpayers back to individuals, medical facilities, state governments and other federal agencies like a hand grenade. The only solution to the rising costs of Medicare -- aka health care or older people -- to society is to reduce the cost of health care. That or start producing soylent green.
Medicare is accused of having a high rate of fraud and abuse. I've seen estimates of up to $70 billion a year. That's unlikely, as it would represent 15% of the total cost (which would still be less, coupled with Medicare's overhead of 3%) than what the typical private insurance company's overhead percentage is!). But if it were true the obvious thing to do would be to combat it, not just rail about it for political gain.
There is undoubtedly a tradeoff between too stringent enforcement and having some people not get the treatment they need. And exactly how much 'fraud and abuse' society should allow so as to insure that almost everyone gets medical care is an analysis that should be done and argued about.
But if there really is any significant amount of fraud and abuse (even like $10 billion, not $70 billion) then devoting some additional resources -- say, $1 billion/yr (the entire FBI only costs $8.3 billion/yr) -- towards nabbing the scammers seems like it would reduce the problem by a lot more than what it would cost -- a good investment, in other words.
Like many good investments this country seems incapable of making.
Yet such is Paul Ryan's plan -- to provide future Medicare recipients with money (I'll avoid the sensitive term vouchers) which they will then use to go out and buy their own, private, insurance policies.
That scares the bejesus out of me; if you have any sense it should scare the beyahweh out of you; and I suspect it scares the bezeus out of a lot of people. I am not at all surprised at the blowback the House Republicans have gotten by passing such a plan.
Medicare can't be perfect. Nothing is. But I must say that for a government program it seems to generate little griping. Maybe I read in all the wrong places, but have you ever heard of any serious protests by seniors against Medicare? Does your parent or grandparent complain bitterly about those Medicare bureaucrats? If so, I don't know about it. And I get AARP magazine and actually look it over.
Only those in the mindless thrall of ideology would be eager to turn a successful and popular government program over to an industry whose goal of maximizing profit must inevitably tend its policies towards insuring (heh) the death of any older person who gets seriously sick.
Even more bizarre is the plan's attempt to limit government expenditures on Medicare by defining away the problem. It does this by limiting the amount of money handed out to seniors using a formula that has nothing to do with the rising costs of premiums or the medical inflation rate.
The problem is that unless we, as a society, are willing to push grandma off a cliff then someone has to pay. The money has to come from somewhere! I fail to see any benefit to society to have this burden tossed from one agency of the federal government and taxpayers back to individuals, medical facilities, state governments and other federal agencies like a hand grenade. The only solution to the rising costs of Medicare -- aka health care or older people -- to society is to reduce the cost of health care. That or start producing soylent green.
Medicare is accused of having a high rate of fraud and abuse. I've seen estimates of up to $70 billion a year. That's unlikely, as it would represent 15% of the total cost (which would still be less, coupled with Medicare's overhead of 3%) than what the typical private insurance company's overhead percentage is!). But if it were true the obvious thing to do would be to combat it, not just rail about it for political gain.
There is undoubtedly a tradeoff between too stringent enforcement and having some people not get the treatment they need. And exactly how much 'fraud and abuse' society should allow so as to insure that almost everyone gets medical care is an analysis that should be done and argued about.
But if there really is any significant amount of fraud and abuse (even like $10 billion, not $70 billion) then devoting some additional resources -- say, $1 billion/yr (the entire FBI only costs $8.3 billion/yr) -- towards nabbing the scammers seems like it would reduce the problem by a lot more than what it would cost -- a good investment, in other words.
Like many good investments this country seems incapable of making.