Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has joined one of the bitterest foes of Medicare, Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), to propose “bipartisan” legislation that would give private, for-profit insurance companies entry into the program. The Ryan-Wyden proposal was hailed by GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, and condemned by liberal Democrats, including California Representative Pete Stark, who said the proposal “ends Medicare as we know it, pure and simple.”
Here’s AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka’s assessment:
By Rich Trumka
President, AFL-CIO
The Ryan-Wyden proposal cripples Medicare in order to give the Republican Party a political boost and to earn Senator Wyden praise from powerful people who care more about the appearance of bipartisanship and insurance industry profits than the health of America's seniors.
The basic idea is to have private for-profit insurance companies compete with traditional Medicare. But we already know this does not work since Medicare is more cost-effective than private plans and for-profit insurance companies "compete" by cherry-picking healthier patients and making it harder for their sicker patients to get the care they need.
This zombie idea has already been tried and has already failed. We tried it before with Medicare Advantage, which failed to reduce costs or deliver quality care. Medicare Advantage's costs were 13 percent higher than traditional Medicare.
Rep. Ryan spent 2011 on the defensive, defending his politically deadly proposal to replace traditional Medicare with vouchers for private insurance. The Congressional Budget Office already found that plan would increase overall health care costs by $34 trillion over 75 years and increase out-of-pocket costs by $6,000 per senior per year.
Ryan-Wyden is not about cost containment, and even its authors admit that vouchers would not be more cost-effective than traditional Medicare. So as a fallback they propose a budget cap, but they neglect to provide the necessary details about how their failsafe mechanism would work or who would pay the price for failure.
The Ryan-Wyden plan betrays a fundamental misdiagnosis of the problem of health care cost growth. We agree that if America fails to bring health care cost growth under control, health care costs will eventually bankrupt families, private businesses, state governments, and the federal government. But Medicare, which is more cost-effective than private insurance, is not the problem, it is the solution to runaway health care costs.
It is the height of irony that the Ryan-Wyden plan destabilizes the most effective tool we have to control health care cost growth, which is Medicare. Under Ryan-Wyden, private for-profit insurance companies will cherry pick the healthiest seniors and stick Medicare with sicker and more costly seniors, driving up costs for Medicare, fragmenting and destabilizing the Medicare risk pool, and leaving traditional Medicare to wither on the vine.
In the end, the answer to the problem of health care cost growth is for more people to use Medicare, not fewer. The Ryan-Wyden zombie proposal takes us in exactly the wrong direction.
Showing posts with label Medicare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Medicare. Show all posts
Friday, December 30, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Medicare: Playing games and causing pain
By Will Parry
President Obama has drawn up a plan to reduce the federal budget deficit by another $3 trillion over ten years, including $320 billion in cuts in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. His proposal will go to the Congressional “super committee” for their consideration.
The White House admitted the plan would impose “a lot of pain,” and Robert Pear, writing in the New York Times, said the pain is certainly there in the Medicare and Medicaid cuts.
“Mr. Obama proposed higher premiums and deductibles for many Medicare beneficiaries” and would “start charging co-payments to frail homebound older people who receive home health services,” Pear said.
The Center for Medicare Advocacy (CMA) judged the Obama plan as an improvement over the Republican voucher proposal but found some aspects of it “troubling,” including “increased cost-sharing for beneficiaries – especially for people with long-term conditions.”
The Obama plan would require new beneficiaries to pay higher deductibles before Medicare’s excellent coverage kicks in. It would sock new beneficiaries who buy private Medigap policies with a 30 percent premium increase. It would charge higher premiums to higher-income beneficiaries. And starting in 2017, the plan would saddle new beneficiaries with a co-payment for home health care.
Such co-payments would “significantly increase out-of-pocket costs for many low-income widows with multiple chronic conditions,” said Howard J. Bedlin, vice president of the National Council on Aging.
On the positive side, the President would maintain the present eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare; would not tamper with the provision for annual cost-of-living adjustments; and would reduce drug costs for low-income beneficiaries.
CMA offered an alternative Medicare proposal that would reduce the federal deficit substantially without shifting the cost to the program’s beneficiaries. Here is CMA’s “Six-Point Solution”:
• Negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies. The industry picked up 47 million customers with the enactment of Medicare drug coverage in 2003, but ever since has adjusted the prices of its products only in one direction -- upwards.
• Stop paying private Medicare plans more than traditional Medicare.
• Include a drug benefit in traditional Medicare.
• Extend Medicaid drug rebates to Medicare dual eligibles. People eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid make up one fourth of all Medicare drug users. Rebates already available to those on Medicaid should be extended to all dual eligibles.
•Lower the age of Medicare eligibility. Lowering the age of eligibility to 55 would add revenue from people likely to need less care than older enrollees. And it would provide Medicare’s excellent coverage for millions aged 55 to 64 who are now unable to afford private insurance.
• Let the Affordable Care Act do its job. Beat back all efforts to repeal or defund health care reform. Many provisions in the new law will reduce health care costs for all Americans.
Judith Stein, Executive Director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, is appealing for citizen pressure on President Obama and the Congress.
“Tell them that shifting costs from the federal government to beneficiaries and their families – whether through a voucher program or increased cost-sharing – is a perversion of Medicare’s original intent to protect older people and their families from illness and financial ruin due to health care costs,” Stein said, adding:
“Plus it’s not needed for deficit reduction!”
President Obama has drawn up a plan to reduce the federal budget deficit by another $3 trillion over ten years, including $320 billion in cuts in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. His proposal will go to the Congressional “super committee” for their consideration.
The White House admitted the plan would impose “a lot of pain,” and Robert Pear, writing in the New York Times, said the pain is certainly there in the Medicare and Medicaid cuts.
“Mr. Obama proposed higher premiums and deductibles for many Medicare beneficiaries” and would “start charging co-payments to frail homebound older people who receive home health services,” Pear said.
The Center for Medicare Advocacy (CMA) judged the Obama plan as an improvement over the Republican voucher proposal but found some aspects of it “troubling,” including “increased cost-sharing for beneficiaries – especially for people with long-term conditions.”
The Obama plan would require new beneficiaries to pay higher deductibles before Medicare’s excellent coverage kicks in. It would sock new beneficiaries who buy private Medigap policies with a 30 percent premium increase. It would charge higher premiums to higher-income beneficiaries. And starting in 2017, the plan would saddle new beneficiaries with a co-payment for home health care.
Such co-payments would “significantly increase out-of-pocket costs for many low-income widows with multiple chronic conditions,” said Howard J. Bedlin, vice president of the National Council on Aging.
On the positive side, the President would maintain the present eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare; would not tamper with the provision for annual cost-of-living adjustments; and would reduce drug costs for low-income beneficiaries.
CMA offered an alternative Medicare proposal that would reduce the federal deficit substantially without shifting the cost to the program’s beneficiaries. Here is CMA’s “Six-Point Solution”:
• Negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies. The industry picked up 47 million customers with the enactment of Medicare drug coverage in 2003, but ever since has adjusted the prices of its products only in one direction -- upwards.
• Stop paying private Medicare plans more than traditional Medicare.
• Include a drug benefit in traditional Medicare.
• Extend Medicaid drug rebates to Medicare dual eligibles. People eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid make up one fourth of all Medicare drug users. Rebates already available to those on Medicaid should be extended to all dual eligibles.
•Lower the age of Medicare eligibility. Lowering the age of eligibility to 55 would add revenue from people likely to need less care than older enrollees. And it would provide Medicare’s excellent coverage for millions aged 55 to 64 who are now unable to afford private insurance.
• Let the Affordable Care Act do its job. Beat back all efforts to repeal or defund health care reform. Many provisions in the new law will reduce health care costs for all Americans.
Judith Stein, Executive Director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, is appealing for citizen pressure on President Obama and the Congress.
“Tell them that shifting costs from the federal government to beneficiaries and their families – whether through a voucher program or increased cost-sharing – is a perversion of Medicare’s original intent to protect older people and their families from illness and financial ruin due to health care costs,” Stein said, adding:
“Plus it’s not needed for deficit reduction!”
Friday, June 3, 2011
‘Don’t mess with Medicare!’ voters say
By Will Parry
Politicians mess with Medicare at their peril.
Republican Congressional candidate Jane Corwin ran into that rock-hard reality May 24, when her widely expected victory in an ultra-conservative upstate New York district was upended over her stance – and her party’s – on Medicare.
Democrat Kathy Hochul won 48 percent of the vote to Corwin’s 42 percent. Tea Party candidate Jack Davis trailed with 8 percent. The district had sent Republicans to Congress for 40 years.
At the outset of the campaign, Hochul honed in on Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposal to wreck Medicare by turning it into a voucher system – and she never let up. Post-election surveys confirmed that voters of both parties had chosen Hochul because they trusted her to protect Medicare.
“The results set off elation among Democrats and soul-searching among Republicans,” The New York Times reported. The results were a blow to Ryan’s proposed restructuring of Medicare, crafted to save money by sharply reducing coverage for seniors.
The Ryan proposal was incorporated in a budget adopted on a party-line vote in the Republican-controlled House.
Meanwhile, advocates warned that the integrity of Medicare was in jeopardy in bipartisan debt-reduction talks initiated by President Obama and presided over by Vice President Joseph Biden. Referring to these talks, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, declared that “I have said it over and over again, everything needs to be on the table. Medicare is one of the things that needs to be on the table.”
Medicaid a major GOP target
After encountering a firestorm of voter anger over their scheme to destroy Medicare by turning it into a voucher program, House Republicans are training their Congressional gun sights instead on a program that serves children and the poorest Americans: Medicaid.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee was expected to move a bill that would repeal the vital “maintenance of effort” (MOE) requirement in the health care reform law. The MOE provision blocks the states from cutting their Medicaid rolls before the establishment of health care exchanges in 2014.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that eliminating the MOE requirement would cut about 300,000 beneficiaries --- mostly children -- from the program.
The Hill, a news service that summarizes activity in Congress, quoted both Bruce Lesley, president of the children’s advocacy group First Focus, and Director Ron Pollack of Families USA, as expressing deep concern over the threat to Medicaid. “I’ve always worried that Medicare and Social Security would go off the table and Medicaid would the only thing left standing,” Lesley said.
“More than $1.3 trillion of the savings in Representative Paul Ryan’s budget proposal would come from Medicaid,” The Hill reported. “So far, those plans haven’t attracted the same political furor as the budget’s Medicare components. Some Democrats have been blunt about the reason: Seniors vote in large numbers, whereas Medicaid primarily serves children and the poor.”
Medicaid advocates are also concerned about a second proposal in the GOP budget, to convert federal Medicaid funding into block grants for the states. Either Republican proposal would be “all about rationing care and cutting people off of coverage,” Lesley, the children’s advocate, told The Hill.
But Medicaid also benefits legions of seniors. About 70 percent of the nation’s 1.4 million nursing home residents are dependent on Medicaid, the Kaiser Family Foundation reports. Medicaid also helps fill the infamous “donut hole” in Medicare’s prescription drug coverage. Democrats who support deep cuts in Medicaid as a deficit reduction measure could find themselves in serious trouble.
Politicians mess with Medicare at their peril.
Republican Congressional candidate Jane Corwin ran into that rock-hard reality May 24, when her widely expected victory in an ultra-conservative upstate New York district was upended over her stance – and her party’s – on Medicare.
Democrat Kathy Hochul won 48 percent of the vote to Corwin’s 42 percent. Tea Party candidate Jack Davis trailed with 8 percent. The district had sent Republicans to Congress for 40 years.
At the outset of the campaign, Hochul honed in on Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposal to wreck Medicare by turning it into a voucher system – and she never let up. Post-election surveys confirmed that voters of both parties had chosen Hochul because they trusted her to protect Medicare.
“The results set off elation among Democrats and soul-searching among Republicans,” The New York Times reported. The results were a blow to Ryan’s proposed restructuring of Medicare, crafted to save money by sharply reducing coverage for seniors.
The Ryan proposal was incorporated in a budget adopted on a party-line vote in the Republican-controlled House.
Meanwhile, advocates warned that the integrity of Medicare was in jeopardy in bipartisan debt-reduction talks initiated by President Obama and presided over by Vice President Joseph Biden. Referring to these talks, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, declared that “I have said it over and over again, everything needs to be on the table. Medicare is one of the things that needs to be on the table.”
Medicaid a major GOP target
After encountering a firestorm of voter anger over their scheme to destroy Medicare by turning it into a voucher program, House Republicans are training their Congressional gun sights instead on a program that serves children and the poorest Americans: Medicaid.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee was expected to move a bill that would repeal the vital “maintenance of effort” (MOE) requirement in the health care reform law. The MOE provision blocks the states from cutting their Medicaid rolls before the establishment of health care exchanges in 2014.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that eliminating the MOE requirement would cut about 300,000 beneficiaries --- mostly children -- from the program.
The Hill, a news service that summarizes activity in Congress, quoted both Bruce Lesley, president of the children’s advocacy group First Focus, and Director Ron Pollack of Families USA, as expressing deep concern over the threat to Medicaid. “I’ve always worried that Medicare and Social Security would go off the table and Medicaid would the only thing left standing,” Lesley said.
“More than $1.3 trillion of the savings in Representative Paul Ryan’s budget proposal would come from Medicaid,” The Hill reported. “So far, those plans haven’t attracted the same political furor as the budget’s Medicare components. Some Democrats have been blunt about the reason: Seniors vote in large numbers, whereas Medicaid primarily serves children and the poor.”
Medicaid advocates are also concerned about a second proposal in the GOP budget, to convert federal Medicaid funding into block grants for the states. Either Republican proposal would be “all about rationing care and cutting people off of coverage,” Lesley, the children’s advocate, told The Hill.
But Medicaid also benefits legions of seniors. About 70 percent of the nation’s 1.4 million nursing home residents are dependent on Medicaid, the Kaiser Family Foundation reports. Medicaid also helps fill the infamous “donut hole” in Medicare’s prescription drug coverage. Democrats who support deep cuts in Medicaid as a deficit reduction measure could find themselves in serious trouble.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Preserving and Strengthening Medicare
By Congressman Jim McDermott
These days in Washington, D.C., we’re having a big debate over Medicare – whether to dismantle it as Republicans would like to do or make some changes to keep it running smoothly.
In a way, today’s fight over ending or fixing Medicare is history repeating itself. But this fight is also something new. I think it’s an important discussion about our country’s values, and I think it’s a conversation in which every American needs to be participating.
When I graduated from medical school in 1962, I sat in the audience and listened to Dr. Edward Annis who was then President of the American Medical Association (AMA). He talked about the dangers of “socialized medicine” at a time when older Americans were finding it almost impossible to get private health insurance coverage. It was either too expensive or denied altogether, and about half of all seniors in the U.S. had no hospital insurance. It was a dark time in American medicine.
Just like today, the debate boiled down to providing secure, affordable health care or acceding to the interests of lobbyists and corporate money. Back then the most powerful doctors’ organization in the country was against any form of government guarantee of medical care for seniors, and they did almost anything to stop it. The AMA even went so far as to ignore the dangers of smoking cigarettes – they opposed the 1964 Surgeon General’s warning label on cigarette packs – in exchange for votes against Medicare from members of Congress who hailed from tobacco states.
Despite these efforts, Medicare was signed into law, and it established a basic social commitment in our country: when you get older, you’ll always have affordable quality health care. Today, more than 45 million seniors are enjoying the benefits of Medicare.
However, every few years since 1964, the Republicans have tried to repeal Medicare and break that commitment. The difference about today’s fight is that the Republicans may very well succeed – unless Medicare’s beneficiaries and supporters understand what’s at stake and speak out forcefully against the threat.
Republicans recently introduced legislation and an accompanying report that was artfully titled “A Roadmap for America’s Future.” To be clear, if the Republican plan was signed into law, it would end Medicare as we know it. The Republican plan would give each senior a fixed payment to buy insurance in the private market – any difference between the allowance and health care premium payments would come from seniors’ pockets.
Under the Republican plan, the guarantee of quality medical care would end, and tens of thousands of seniors wouldn’t be able to make their premium payments. While many would try to find coverage from private insurance companies, they would likely not succeed.
It’s important to note that seniors already spend close to a third of their income on health care, and that’s with the protection of Medicare. Under the Republican budget proposal, all risk and costs associated with Medicare, which is shared by all of us today, would be shifted to the pocketbooks of seniors.
It’s also important to understand that Medicare is not a profit-driven program unlike private insurance companies who do everything they can to maximize profits at the expense of patients and taxpayers. While Medicare has consistently held administrative costs to 2%, private insurance companies’ administrative costs and profits have often been higher than 30%.
In health care law that passed last year, my Democratic colleagues and I took several commonsense steps to extend the financial health of Medicare until 2029. We are continuing to fight for more reforms that would decrease costs and increase the quality of care that Medicare affords. Medicare is a program that should be strengthened – not destroyed.
And, the American people agree – a recent Washington Post/ABC poll showed that 78 percent of Americans oppose Republican cuts to Medicare. Yet, that hasn’t stopped the Republicans from marching ahead with their efforts to dismantle Medicare.
The truth is that our country has real budget problems to address. Current projections show that while the deficit will go down to about $533 Billion in 2014, it will go up thereafter, largely because of health care costs stemming from both Medicare and other programs.
There are, however, actions we can take to effectively reserve this long, steady rise of health care costs. We can and should do more preventive care, improve primary care, implement stronger payment reforms, as well as bargain more with doctors, drug companies and hospitals.
We could make these reasonable, effective reforms together, but instead Republicans are pushing to end the basic social commitment we established for seniors with the creation of Medicare.
This speaks to a larger issue.
It is common for a party who wins an election in big numbers to think that the public actually endorses their policies – the idea being, “The voters didn’t just put us in power, they love our ideas and want us to pursue them at all costs!” History, however, has shown that one doesn’t always equal the other.
Americans were upset about many things in the 2010 elections and voted accordingly; however, they certainly didn’t elect Republicans because they wanted to see Medicare dismantled.
--------------------------
Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) is a physician as well as a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee. Throughout his career as an elected official in the Washington State Legislature and U.S. Congress, his primary focus has been improving our health care systems to provide more affordable, effective and accessible care to all Americans.
These days in Washington, D.C., we’re having a big debate over Medicare – whether to dismantle it as Republicans would like to do or make some changes to keep it running smoothly.
In a way, today’s fight over ending or fixing Medicare is history repeating itself. But this fight is also something new. I think it’s an important discussion about our country’s values, and I think it’s a conversation in which every American needs to be participating.
When I graduated from medical school in 1962, I sat in the audience and listened to Dr. Edward Annis who was then President of the American Medical Association (AMA). He talked about the dangers of “socialized medicine” at a time when older Americans were finding it almost impossible to get private health insurance coverage. It was either too expensive or denied altogether, and about half of all seniors in the U.S. had no hospital insurance. It was a dark time in American medicine.
Just like today, the debate boiled down to providing secure, affordable health care or acceding to the interests of lobbyists and corporate money. Back then the most powerful doctors’ organization in the country was against any form of government guarantee of medical care for seniors, and they did almost anything to stop it. The AMA even went so far as to ignore the dangers of smoking cigarettes – they opposed the 1964 Surgeon General’s warning label on cigarette packs – in exchange for votes against Medicare from members of Congress who hailed from tobacco states.
Despite these efforts, Medicare was signed into law, and it established a basic social commitment in our country: when you get older, you’ll always have affordable quality health care. Today, more than 45 million seniors are enjoying the benefits of Medicare.
However, every few years since 1964, the Republicans have tried to repeal Medicare and break that commitment. The difference about today’s fight is that the Republicans may very well succeed – unless Medicare’s beneficiaries and supporters understand what’s at stake and speak out forcefully against the threat.
Republicans recently introduced legislation and an accompanying report that was artfully titled “A Roadmap for America’s Future.” To be clear, if the Republican plan was signed into law, it would end Medicare as we know it. The Republican plan would give each senior a fixed payment to buy insurance in the private market – any difference between the allowance and health care premium payments would come from seniors’ pockets.
Under the Republican plan, the guarantee of quality medical care would end, and tens of thousands of seniors wouldn’t be able to make their premium payments. While many would try to find coverage from private insurance companies, they would likely not succeed.
It’s important to note that seniors already spend close to a third of their income on health care, and that’s with the protection of Medicare. Under the Republican budget proposal, all risk and costs associated with Medicare, which is shared by all of us today, would be shifted to the pocketbooks of seniors.
It’s also important to understand that Medicare is not a profit-driven program unlike private insurance companies who do everything they can to maximize profits at the expense of patients and taxpayers. While Medicare has consistently held administrative costs to 2%, private insurance companies’ administrative costs and profits have often been higher than 30%.
In health care law that passed last year, my Democratic colleagues and I took several commonsense steps to extend the financial health of Medicare until 2029. We are continuing to fight for more reforms that would decrease costs and increase the quality of care that Medicare affords. Medicare is a program that should be strengthened – not destroyed.
And, the American people agree – a recent Washington Post/ABC poll showed that 78 percent of Americans oppose Republican cuts to Medicare. Yet, that hasn’t stopped the Republicans from marching ahead with their efforts to dismantle Medicare.
The truth is that our country has real budget problems to address. Current projections show that while the deficit will go down to about $533 Billion in 2014, it will go up thereafter, largely because of health care costs stemming from both Medicare and other programs.
There are, however, actions we can take to effectively reserve this long, steady rise of health care costs. We can and should do more preventive care, improve primary care, implement stronger payment reforms, as well as bargain more with doctors, drug companies and hospitals.
We could make these reasonable, effective reforms together, but instead Republicans are pushing to end the basic social commitment we established for seniors with the creation of Medicare.
This speaks to a larger issue.
It is common for a party who wins an election in big numbers to think that the public actually endorses their policies – the idea being, “The voters didn’t just put us in power, they love our ideas and want us to pursue them at all costs!” History, however, has shown that one doesn’t always equal the other.
Americans were upset about many things in the 2010 elections and voted accordingly; however, they certainly didn’t elect Republicans because they wanted to see Medicare dismantled.
--------------------------
Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) is a physician as well as a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee. Throughout his career as an elected official in the Washington State Legislature and U.S. Congress, his primary focus has been improving our health care systems to provide more affordable, effective and accessible care to all Americans.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Medicare under assault
By Will Parry
Get ready to defend Medicare.
Privatizing the program is a goal the Republicans intend to pursue aggressively in 2011.
House Republicans are discussing the conversion of Medicare into a voucher system as part of their forthcoming budget proposal. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has floated a proposal to allow persons now in Medicare to continue their coverage and persons age 55 to 64 to enter Medicare upon reaching the age of 65. So far, so good.
But under the Ryan plan, when persons now 54 and younger reach age 65, they would get a fixed payment – a voucher -- to buy health insurance in the private market. They’re calling it a “premium support” program because “privatizing” is a politically toxic term.
“Anyone who doesn’t think privatization will mean severe cuts to Medicare benefits, I have a bridge I’d like to sell them,” Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said grimly. “Privatization will make the cuts previously proposed by either party look tame.”
The Medicare voucher scheme received bipartisan support from a self-appointed debt reduction panel co-chaired by former Republican Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Democratic economist Alice Rivlin.
“The vouchers would intentionally be too low to cover the full cost of the premium to encourage seniors to shop wisely – that is, to be forced into buying lower cost and/or lower coverage plans,” said Sarah K. Weinberg, M.D., of Health Care for All Washington. “The net result would be a large shift of actual health costs to seniors who get sick.
“Yes, this would lower the federal deficit, but the cost in lives unnecessarily lost and bankruptcies of sick seniors would ruin the quality of life for families all over the nation,” Dr. Weinberg said. “Medicare was enacted in 1964 specifically to fix these problems that were plaguing families at the time.”
Dr. Weinberg has a simple three-part prescription for Medicare:
“First the program must be saved, then it must be improved for the 21st Century, and then it should be expanded to cover all Americans.”
Friday, November 5, 2010
Extreme privatizer named Social Security trustee
The threat to Social Security and Medicare just turned still more sinister.
Charles Blahous, point man for George W. Bush in his abortive campaign to privatize Social Security, has been named one of two Public Trustees for the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds.
Blahous, formerly on the staff of Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, was the choice of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Blahous is now associated with the far-right Hudson Institute.
The Democrats named Robert Reischauer as trustee. He is a conservative with ties to billionaire Pete Peterson, including membership on the Peterson-funded Committee for a Responsible Budget. If Blahous is clearly an extreme privatizer, Reischauer is at best a lukewarm supporter.
The appointments will weaken Social Security and Medicare from within at a moment when the deficit commission is poised to send its wrecking proposal to Congress.
Charles Blahous, point man for George W. Bush in his abortive campaign to privatize Social Security, has been named one of two Public Trustees for the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds.
Blahous, formerly on the staff of Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, was the choice of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Blahous is now associated with the far-right Hudson Institute.
The Democrats named Robert Reischauer as trustee. He is a conservative with ties to billionaire Pete Peterson, including membership on the Peterson-funded Committee for a Responsible Budget. If Blahous is clearly an extreme privatizer, Reischauer is at best a lukewarm supporter.
The appointments will weaken Social Security and Medicare from within at a moment when the deficit commission is poised to send its wrecking proposal to Congress.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
An Open Letter To the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform
The Fiscal Commission now starting its work needs to begin on the right footing. If this effort is based on incorrect assumptions to start with it cannot achieve success. Erroneous ideas and facts about the deficit and debt are all too often found in current political rhetoric and in shallow and uninformed media coverage. This can only cause confusion, anxiety, and anger among Americans.
The most important and significant of these erroneous ideas is that the so-called "entitlements" have something to do with the increasing deficits. Social Security is separately funded through the payroll tax, which is covering all expenses of paying benefits and currently producing a surplus.
Medicare is also separately funded through payroll taxes, premiums, co-payments, etc. Of course, the escalating costs of medical care need to be addressed but this should not be within the purview of a fiscal policy commission. The excessive costs of administration of medical care including excess profits, executive compensation, research and development incurred by medical device companies, hospitals, clinics, laboratories, insurance companies, etc need to be studied and reformed. This should be done by a commission consisting of medical professionals, management consultants, etc. Your commission is not qualified to do this. Therefore a decision should be taken at the outset to set aside the entitlements and to adopt a plan that will focus on tax and revenue reform, and discretionary spending on such items as defense, military spending, foreign aid, earmarks, corporate subsidies, the war on drugs, etc.
If the Commission insists on placing primary attention on the "entitlements" it will endanger the whole project and disappoint the President's hope for real progress in reducing deficit spending. Attacks on Social Security and Medicare can only produce an outpouring of angry citizen protest which will make the so-called anti-government Tea Party passion look puny.
"Messing around" with Social Security and Medicare is playing with people’s lives, health and well being. Changes in these programs mean less food on the table for many, no doctor to help when sick, no hospital to perform life saving surgery.
Therefore, the most important decision the Commission can make at this crucial starting point is to clearly disassociate itself from those influential figures and groups in the anti-government business and investment communities who are motivated ideologically by a desire to dismantle the New Deal and Great Society originated programs. These programs have become so integrated into the lives of ordinary Americans that adverse changes would in effect tear the heart out of American civilization. We have seen the violent citizen reactions in certain European countries to reductions in life sustaining benefit programs. To activate this kind of political and social disorder in America will not provide any solution to the deficit problem
Sincerely,
Lawrence D. Greene, Vice Chair,
South King County Chapter,
Alliance for Retired Americans
Editor’s note: We urge our readers to write their own letters. Tell the commission to keep its hands off Social Security and Medicare. Address the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, 1650 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20504.
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The most important and significant of these erroneous ideas is that the so-called "entitlements" have something to do with the increasing deficits. Social Security is separately funded through the payroll tax, which is covering all expenses of paying benefits and currently producing a surplus.
Medicare is also separately funded through payroll taxes, premiums, co-payments, etc. Of course, the escalating costs of medical care need to be addressed but this should not be within the purview of a fiscal policy commission. The excessive costs of administration of medical care including excess profits, executive compensation, research and development incurred by medical device companies, hospitals, clinics, laboratories, insurance companies, etc need to be studied and reformed. This should be done by a commission consisting of medical professionals, management consultants, etc. Your commission is not qualified to do this. Therefore a decision should be taken at the outset to set aside the entitlements and to adopt a plan that will focus on tax and revenue reform, and discretionary spending on such items as defense, military spending, foreign aid, earmarks, corporate subsidies, the war on drugs, etc.
If the Commission insists on placing primary attention on the "entitlements" it will endanger the whole project and disappoint the President's hope for real progress in reducing deficit spending. Attacks on Social Security and Medicare can only produce an outpouring of angry citizen protest which will make the so-called anti-government Tea Party passion look puny.
"Messing around" with Social Security and Medicare is playing with people’s lives, health and well being. Changes in these programs mean less food on the table for many, no doctor to help when sick, no hospital to perform life saving surgery.
Therefore, the most important decision the Commission can make at this crucial starting point is to clearly disassociate itself from those influential figures and groups in the anti-government business and investment communities who are motivated ideologically by a desire to dismantle the New Deal and Great Society originated programs. These programs have become so integrated into the lives of ordinary Americans that adverse changes would in effect tear the heart out of American civilization. We have seen the violent citizen reactions in certain European countries to reductions in life sustaining benefit programs. To activate this kind of political and social disorder in America will not provide any solution to the deficit problem
Sincerely,
Lawrence D. Greene, Vice Chair,
South King County Chapter,
Alliance for Retired Americans
Editor’s note: We urge our readers to write their own letters. Tell the commission to keep its hands off Social Security and Medicare. Address the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, 1650 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20504.
Back to Home
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