Road To The Poorhouse For The Elderly: Mr. Ryan’s Budget.
Wendell Potter, former CIGNA executive and insurance abuse whistleblower, points out an obvious problem with Rep. Ryan’s Medicare reform using vouchers: Health care costs have been going up at twice the rate of inflation for more than a decade, so Ryan’s vouchers won’t come close to paying for seniors’ medical care. The current Medicare program guarantees a high percentage of health care costs payments, irregardless of inflation. In other words Ryan’s plan will downshift an ever increasing portion of health care expenses from the federal budget to the individual budgets of the elderly.
Last month the government reported that the consumer price index had increased 1.7 percent between June 2011 and June 2012, meaning we’ve been paying on average 1.7 percent more this year than last year for goods and services. The cost of medical care, however, shot up 4.3 percent — more than two and a half times the CPI. And that was not an aberration. The cost of medical care has been rising faster than the cost of just about everything else in this country for years. That’s one of the reasons why private health insurance premiums have been increasing so rapidly. That and the fact that insurance corporations have to report a big enough profit every quarter to satisfy their shareholders and Wall Street analysts.
Health insurance premiums rose 9 percent in 2011 to an average of $15,073 for an employer-subsidized family plan, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Over the past 10 years, premiums have increased a “whopping” (Kaiser’s word) 113 percent, much faster than wage increases and general inflation. So you can see what almost certainly would happen to Medicare beneficiaries beginning in 2022: They would have to shell out more and more money out of their own pockets every year just to cover the premiums their private insurers would charge them.
That’s bad enough, but consider this: Health insurers began implementing a strategy several years ago to move all of us into high-deductible plans, meaning every one of us will soon be paying (if we’re not already) thousands of dollars of our own money for medical care before our insurance company will pay a dime. Insurers adopted this strategy because they have failed miserably at controlling health care costs. If you can’t control those costs, the only way you can make Wall Street-pleasing profits if you’re an insurer is to keep hiking premiums and shifting more of the cost of care to policyholders.
Under the privatized Medicare program Ryan envisions, the effect of that cost-shifting strategy would be disastrous for the growing number of senior citizens who are finding that every year they have less and less money to make ends meet.
Beezer here. Ryan’s entire budget is aimed at slashing so-called ‘social’ spending, either privatizing it (social security), reducing it’s usefulness (medicare and medicaid), or simply doing away with it altogether (all other social spending, including programs aimed at children and women). For the wealthy who have no need for any of these programs, this is just what the doctor ordered because it means they won’t have to bother with paying more taxes. The problem for the average voter is that none of this will ever be revealed to them. The GOP has enough money to drown out any such analysis under a cacophony of mis-leading if not outright false, TV commercials. We could and should have an open discussion about how to actually ‘bend the curve’ of health care cost expenses, but the GOP has never offered anything along those lines. Instead every savings Obama wants to make in health care costs (like getting better pricing on drugs) is labeled a ‘cut in Medicare’ by the GOP. And, of course, the Ryan idea of substituting vouchers to shift costs down to elderly private budgets.
Tags: Center for Public Integrity, insurance whistle blower, iWatchNews, Medicaid, Medicare, Ryan's budget, Social Security, Wendell Potter
August 14th, 2012 at 11:12 am
Medicare will be going bankrupt in 12 years. The dems have offered NOTHING to solve this problem, Ryan has. Dems do nothing but demagogue Ryan’s plan and only continue to kick the can in order to get re elected. They know that those over 55 will still get medicare as it stands now but those under 55 will have a choice. They’re nothing but liars and try to put fear into the seniors just like you do in your postings.
August 14th, 2012 at 11:59 am
You fail to consider the major costs added to health care is the costs for protective ins paid for by the health care industry. Too mant ‘tests’ most which are unnecessry are administered to patients in order to cover their asses for fear of suits brought on. You’re president supports these suits and refuses to even consider tort reform. It is estimated that health care costs could be lowered by nearly 25% if tort geform was instituted.
August 14th, 2012 at 2:31 pm
Funny about that. In all the academic papers studying the problem of rising health care costs, tort reform is far down the list. These are studies by people who are directly involved in health care, or who study the system for a living. They’re experts, in other words. The only place I read about tort reform as such an important issue is from Republican politicians.
Outside of Ryan’s voucher program, the GOP has no health care policy prescriptions. And Ryan’s voucher program doesn’t even pretend to do anything about containing health expense inflation. It just shifts the costs down to individuals. It’s like he’s never read any of the studies. And there are lots of studies.
What’s cost shifted doesn’t appear in the Federal Budget, of course, so Ryan is accomplishing his real main goal: Downsize government. As for improving the system itself, he doesn’t have any ideas. No one on his side of aisle has any ideas about actually making the system better.
Obama will recycle savings–that’s what they are, not cuts–back to help those who need financial support in order to buy insurance.
And of course Obama is all about getting more people insured. That’s a big goal in his mind. Romney thinks too many people have insurance apparently, because he has never said universal access is important to him. But then he’s versatile–after all it’s called Romneycare, right?
August 14th, 2012 at 3:18 pm
The only reshifting I see that Obama does is rob 716 billion out of medicare, set up a 15 man panel to decide what care the elderly get and put that 715 billion in Obama care. I guess that will slow down the lines of illegal aliens at the emergency rooms.
August 15th, 2012 at 12:56 pm
I think they call it the “DEATH PANEL”
August 15th, 2012 at 8:21 pm
I’m thinking the for profit death panels are far more dangerous.
The $500 billion ‘cuts’ are the estimates of what the ACA would save compared to doing nothing. Not from benefits but from savings. That was three years ago when the laws first passed. The GOP didn’t even know the savings have increased since then, so when you now estimate them its $716 billion, because Medicare costs will increase no matter what we do.
The renaming of savings to ‘cuts’ is just another way to mis-represent something. Nothing new there. Politics ain’t bean bag, right? Lying is OK today in politics.
August 15th, 2012 at 10:39 pm
I have no idea what you’re talking about and I assume you don’t either.
August 16th, 2012 at 1:34 pm
In a survey by the Journel of the AMA it was stated that physicians practice “Defensive Medicine” in order to avoid legal action against them. It is estimated that unnecessary added tests costing between 191 billion to 239 billion was added to the costs of medical care in 2010 due to this protective practice. The CBO STATES PREMIUMS WOULD BE LOWERED BY APPROX 11BILLION IF TORT REFORM WAS INSTITUTED.
August 17th, 2012 at 6:03 pm
Would you please link these things?
August 18th, 2012 at 4:03 pm
I can give you info Beez but unfortunately I can’t give you the ability to comprehend. Use fact check.
August 18th, 2012 at 7:45 pm
uh huh. Yup, that’s it.
August 18th, 2012 at 7:52 pm
CBO said total savings over 10 years, with a $250,000 pain and suffering cap and a $500,000 total cap, would be an estimated $54 billion. This is a major upgrade from earlier estimates of $4 billion.
Not peanuts in other words. What’s harder to estimate is what effect these caps would have on healthcare outcomes–an important consideration.
August 19th, 2012 at 12:28 am
Who can seniors sue over at the appointed govt 15 person bureucrat panel that will decide what procedures will be allowed for medicare recipiants?Maybe then Obama we’ll have tort reform to cover his ass.
August 21st, 2012 at 7:17 am
The bureaucrats are doctors, for one thing, not accountants and lawyers who populate the private insurance ‘death panels’ in today’s system.
August 21st, 2012 at 2:29 pm
can you please explain to me why older folks, who have had their entire lives to save for retirement etc and statistically have the largest savings SHOULDN’T pay more? What, you want younger people to?
August 22nd, 2012 at 10:06 am
CBo out today. “The national debt will be over 20 trillion bt 2016″. We are mortgaging our children’s lives.
August 22nd, 2012 at 10:52 am
advisor. I don’t see anyone proposing income considerations re: Medicare or SS. I don’t have a problem with the idea, however.
capt. So raise revenues and cut spending. Not just one or the other.
August 22nd, 2012 at 11:07 am
screw income considerations…. its their benefit, they should pay for it. Just like when i’m that age i don’t want my kids to pay for me.
August 22nd, 2012 at 3:51 pm
Advisor, You know all liberals want others to pay for them, even their own kids. It’s me, me, me to them. Unfortunately this administration has increased the takers instead of the producers.We are doomed if Obama has another term.