Cutting waste will protect Medicare
I hope you will click on the link and read the whole article. It is quite enlightening. I certainly wasn’t happy about Medicare cuts, but if this article is correct, those cuts would be savings cuts, not cuts to care.
Bill Kallio
Kallio lives in Richmond and is the state director for AARP Virginia.
AARP has been fighting for affordable health care for older people for 50 years. We want to thank Rep. Tom Perriello for his vote in favor of better health care for every Virginian by voting in favor of H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. The House bill takes a large step toward making health care more affordable and accessible for everyone.
[snip]
There has been much discussion about the various components of the bill. Some well-intentioned people also are spreading some misinformation about the proposal that AARP endorsed.
AARP is fighting for legislation that protects traditional Medicare benefits and holds down out-of-pocket costs. Removing waste and inefficiency from Medicare is critical to saving Medicare money and making sure it is financially sound for future retirees.
[snip]
The House health care reform bill includes Medicare savings measures supported by the nation’s largest hospital associations. The other providers are nursing homes and home health agencies, which traditionally enjoy high profit margins and still benefit from yearly pay raises.
By tying these pay raises to the productivity increases in the economy overall, these providers will still get billions more in funding over the next 10 years. The House reform plan would continue to allow people to receive the services they need, without padding excessive profit margins.
For example, Medicare is paying billions of dollars in subsidies to private insurance companies that cover some Medicare patients in Medicare Advantage plans, costing the government 14 percent more per patient. When these subsidies were created, they were supposed to be temporary — private insurance companies said that over time, they could “do more with less” than traditional Medicare. Instead, the subsidies increased. We can save Medicare billions of dollars and make sure patient care isn’t taking a back seat to insurance companies by reducing these subsidies.
The House plan would provide $502 billion in savings by cutting fraud, abuse and waste in the Medicare program. While this seems like a large cut, it represents only 7.1 percent of Medicare spending over the next 10 yea
December 8th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
This article is the first one I’ve read that explains in simple, straight-forward language why the private insurance companies prefer Medicare Advantage plans instead of original Medicare plans. The next time the anti-health-care-reform talking heads say that the Dems want to cut Medicare payments to seniors, remember that they are actually screaming about reforms that will lessen the private insurance companies’ excessive profits from Advantage plans.
December 9th, 2009 at 5:46 am
Sage, I haven’t read the article yet, but I will a little later on this morning. I did go to the link for the article where I readthat the author of it, bill kallio, is the AARP state director for the state of Virginia.
My immediate, emotional reaction to reading that paragraph was …
IT WAS AARP THAT CAME UP WITH THE DOUGHNUT HOLE IN THE MEDICARE PROGRAM.
A friend of mine, on Medicare, informed me just a couple of weeks ago that she has already reached her doughnut hole for her prescription needs.
My friend is diabetic with peripheral complications from the diabetes.
I have to get through my emotional reactivity to AARP first before I can go on to read the article.
These days the question in my entire being is: why are they even fighting over this or that … blaming medicare and social security for the pilfering of our money and transgression to our taxes they are committing by keeping up an invasion and occupation and the military operations of a country we should not even be in.
It is as if the government is evicting us out of our tax dollars so they can appropriate it and do with it what it wants, not waht is right…. and the right thing is … universal healthcare for all.