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| EXPANDING MEDICARE
The Pros and Cons of Increasing Medicare Eligibility January 16, 1998 |
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Questions asked
in this forum:
Is the Medicare proposal a federal government power grab? If the proposal is "revenue neutral", why not expand Medicare? Is there the political will to increase premiums if health care costs continue to rise? Who can afford $3600 to $4000 a year for Medicare? How will this proposal impact health care generally? Will this allow business to start reducing its health coverage? Virginia Gatz from Lawton, OK asks: As I understand Medicare is a supplement to pay with a general health insurance plan. With the Medicare payment at $3600 to $4000 a year, and the general insurance at about the same cost for retirees, don't we still lose a lot of poor people who can't afford those kinds of payments? What do we do about the poor and sick? I don't even think I can afford 8,000 a year for health care.
The National Taxpayers Union responds:
You are correct in surmising that many of the intended beneficiaries of the proposed Medicare expansion would still be unable to afford the new premiums. In fact, proponents of the plan contend that only some 300,000 out of an estimated 3 million uninsured in this age category will actually enroll. This inconsistency has led many critics to suggest that the President's ulterior motive is to create more constituents for Medicare who will have to be subsidized by general taxpayers.
Those suspicions were confirmed in a January 8 article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. According to the Journal, "The cost of the buy-in . . . creates fairness problems and will prompt demands from some advocates . . . that government subsidies be provided to those who can't afford to take part in the program." The article goes on to cite a spokesperson for Families USA who said, "That's and issue that needs to be addressed."
While we would agree that health insurance affordability needs to be addressed, Medicare is neither and efficient nor an effective model for delivering health care in the 21st Century. The Medicare program is riddled with fraud, to the tune of some $23 billion per year according to a General Accounting Office audit. And as we pointed out earlier, recently enacted legislation that purports to balance the federal budget by 2002 has only delayed, not solved, the underlying fiscal problems facing Medicare. We should be running away from, not towards, the kind of centralized, socialized medicine that President Clinton is proposing piecemeal.
Joseph White responds:
Actually, even with its flaws that I mentioned above, Medicare should take care of most of the average person's expenses. So, once a person was on Medicare, they shouldn't be spending three or four thousand for Medigap coverage. And Medicare SHOULD be less expensive for the same benefits than private insurance. But some people spend one or even two thousand on Medigap now. And yes, the proposal doesn't really help folks who don't have the money. We do about the same thing we always have for the poor and sick: Medicaid, with all its problems.
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