Health Reform Hub Issues

Issues :: Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP

Federal Spending Rises a Record 16%
Michael A. Fletcher and Carol Morello

The Washington Post, 9/01/10

Federal domestic spending increased a record 16 percent, to $3.2 trillion, in 2009, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, largely because of a boost in aid to the unemployed and the huge economic stimulus package enacted to rescue the sinking economy. Overall, the largest chunk of federal spending - about 46 percent of the $3.2 trillion - went to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, entitlement programs that are projected to swell as the population ages. Read more...

More Health Care Fiction
Boston Herald, 8/30/10

The notion that “if you like your health plan you can keep it” under Obamacare has already been proven a lie. Just ask the 200,000 Massachusetts residents enrolled in Medicare Advantage who will be forced to switch, with the elimination of that popular program. Now a new analysis by a private research firm estimates that more than 3 million Medicare beneficiaries nationwide will be forced to find a new prescription drug plan, thanks to an expected culling of the plans offered in each state. Gee, nobody mentioned that! According to the Associated Press, the analysis by Avalere Health estimates that 2.75 million Medicare beneficiaries would be forced to enroll in a new drug plan because of a Medicare requirement that limits insurers to offering one “basic” plan in each state. When other changes are factored in as many as 3.7 million recipients could have to deal with the inconvenience of a switch. Read more...

How Obamacare Empowers the Medicare Bureaucracy: What Seniors and Their Doctors Should Know
Clete DiGiovanni, M.D. and Robert Moffit, Ph.D.

The Heritage Foundation, 8/24/10

The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (PPACA) is projected to yield $575 billion in Medicare savings over the next 10 years, mostly from Medicare payment reductions to doctors, hospitals, and health plans. But beneath these payment reductions, the PPACA also makes statutory changes that could challenge the autonomy of physicians to treat patients as they think best, undercut the freedom of physicians to remain in private practice, and threaten the continuation of fee-for-service medicine regardless of the preferences of doctors and patients.  Read more...

More Than 3M Seniors May Have to Switch Drug Plans
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar

Associated Press, 8/25/10

A plan by Medicare to try to make it simpler for consumers to pick drug coverage could force 3 million seniors to switch plans next year whether they like it or not, says an independent analysis. That risks undercutting President Barack Obama's promise that people can keep their health plans if they like them. And it could be an unwelcome surprise for many seniors who hadn't intended to make a change during Medicare's open enrollment season this fall. Read more...

Obama Employs Politics of Fear in Social Security Debate 
The Oklahoman Editorial, 8/20/10

Obama used the massive retirement program's 75th birthday to claim the GOP wants to destroy it. Naturally, he hauled out a boogeyman: Some Republicans want to make "privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda" if they win a majority in Congress. Run for your lives! In fact, a leading proposal by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to reform Social Security, Medicare and health care includes giving Americans younger than 55 the option of investing up to one-third of their payroll taxes in private retirement accounts — managed by the Social Security Administration but owned by the individual worker. Ryan's plan would preserve the current program for people 55 and older, while gradually raising the retirement age over the next 100 years. Is it a finished proposal? No, but it's a good starting point for a long-needed national discussion on Social Security's future. Read more...

Obamacare’s Stealth Ambush of Senior Citizens
David Freddoso

The Washington Examiner, 8/18/10

Even Obamacare’s biggest cheerleaders won’t be able to ignore Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster forever. Based on current law, Foster says, seniors who rely on Medicare will replace Medicaid recipients at the bottom of the health care ladder as early as 2019, five years after the individual mandate kicks in. That’s when the fees Medicare pays to providers will be slashed below Medicaid rates, which are already well below market prices. Read more...

Medicare: Read the disclaimer
Scott Burns

The Houston Chronicle, 8/17/10

If the reports from the Trustees for Social Security and Medicare are accurate, our collective unfunded obligations shrank by a whopping $15.56 trillion when the reports were released on Aug. 5. The decrease is nearly twice as large as the entire $8.6 trillion in public federal debt outstanding. It's also larger than the $13.24 trillion in total federal debt when all governmental holdings, such as the Social Security trust fund, are considered. Read more...

Health Panel Gets McDonnell's Charge: Lower Costs
Bob Lewis

The Associated Press, 8/17/10

A new panel of corporate and professional health care heavyweights, political figures and medical policy experts was tasked Monday with devising "uniquely Virginia" ways to cut the cost of health care and improve its delivery. Chief among problems Gov. Bob McDonnell told the 24-member panel to address is Medicaid, the federal-state health services program for the needy, aged and disabled that will demand billions of dollars more each year from Virginia's budget. "The growth of Medicaid spending is unsustainable. I will not pass on a broken Medicaid system to another governor," said McDonnell, who began his nonrenewable four-year term in January. Read more...

Side Effects: Obamacare Puts States Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Kathryn Nix

The Heritage Foundation: The Foundry, 8/17/10

Obamacare creates a host of new federal requirements billed as consumer protections. But enacting these policies falls not on the feds, but on the states. Some of these provisions were among the more popular components of Obamacare: guaranteed issue for children; letting individuals remain on their parents’ health plan up to age 26; requiring insurers to cover federally-defined preventive services, etc. The goals behind these mandates are worthy. But they could be achieved in better ways. The approach taken here is virtually guaranteed to accelerate insurance costs.  Ironically, Obamacare also requires states to review “unreasonable” rate increases. Read more...

Misled on Medicare
Stanford G. Ross and David M. Walker

The New York Times, 8/14/10

From 1990 to 1995, we served as public trustees for Social Security and Medicare. ... One of the reforms we were proudest of during our tenure was the inclusion of a separate public trustees’ statement with the annual summary trustees’ report. We tried to make these statements as clear, concise and honest as possible. ... It is because we so value these reports — and what they stand for — that we feel compelled to express our profound disappointment with this year’s report, which for the third year in a row was assembled without the input of independent trustees. To make matters worse, the conclusions expressed in this year’s Medicare report were, to our minds, based on unreasonable assumptions that produced unrealistic and misleading results. The unwarrantedly optimistic report could produce a serious misunderstanding of the true financial condition of Medicare and result in significant public confusion. Read more...