Americans Like Medicare the Way it Is, but That Won't Stop Paul Ryan From Killing It

Ryan said he wanted to address Medicare’s “serious problems” … argued that Medicare’s financial problems were caused by the healthcare reform law—though actually the ACA extended the projected solvency of Medicare’s Part A Hospital trust fund.

Modern Health Care: A Health Affairs study last year found that Medicare Advantage plans keep their provider payment rates down by pegging them to traditional Medicare rates … plans benefit from Medicare’s rule that out-of-network providers cannot charge more than Medicare rates. “The only way Medicare Advantage plans are competitive with traditional Medicare is that there is a public option and there is price regulation that limits balance billing by non-network providers,” said Dr. Robert Berenson, a co-author of the Health Affairs study and former member of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

Dr. Tom Price—a top contender to become HHS secretary—said that congressional Republicans will push ahead with a Medicare overhaul within the first six to eight months of 2017, and that the Senate will pass it through an expedited budget reconciliation process that avoids a likely Democratic filibuster.  

According to a mid-2015 Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 70% of Americans support keeping Medicare as it is today, with only 26% supporting a shift to premium support. Those percentages were similar among Democrats and Republicans. Just 18% of seniors supported turning Medicare into a premium-support program.

While some observers expressed surprise that Republicans want to leap into the perilous politics of Medicare reform after Trump’s narrow election victory, Tom Scully, who served as CMS administrator under President George W. Bush, was enthusiastic. “If they’re going to reform the ACA and Medicaid, absolutely they’ll do premium support, and they should, it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “They might get killed, but I don’t think they’re going to find it that politically difficult.”

NOTE: I’m still waiting for the first reporter to ask Paul Ryan how he expects seniors with diminishing mental capacity to shop for insurance and navigate new policies yearly. It happens to all of us, and for Ryan to ignore that flaw is irresponsible.

A former liberal radio talk host who likes to ask the “follow-up question” at Democurmudgeon.blogspot.com

~~~~~

BIN NOTE: If by now you haven’t figured out that Facebook and Google are in cahoots with the corrupt government, then I feel for you, but for those who are well aware of the issues it’s high time you switched over to Seen.life. It is a website that is similar to Facebook but without all the censorship.