What’s really scary? Acting like nothing’s wrong with Medicare
If Medicare reform is on life support, it’s not because of a special election in upstate New York or the Senate’s rejection of the House GOP budget plan.
It’s because one side wants to air TV commercials of a dark-suited Republican pushing grandma off a cliff, while pursuing a path of neglect that would let her die bed-ridden and alone.
There can be no “hands off Medicare” policy. Either your hands are busy trying to fix the indisputably broken program, or your hands are holding it down, helping it collapse under its own unbearable weight.
Left-wing pundits gloated over the news Tuesday from New York’s 26th Congressional District, a longtime Republican stronghold won by a Democratic candidate on the single issue of “GOP’s killing grandma!” Time’s Joe Klein, appearing on MSNBC, called it “a victory for socialism.”
But Margaret Thatcher’s dictum that, with socialism, “eventually you run out of other people’s money” remains true. And with Medicare, “eventually” has arrived.
The main tax dedicated to Medicare, the hospital insurance portion of federal payroll levies, no longer covers even half of retirees’ health expenses. In this fiscal year and the next five combined, Medicare will cost more than the sum raised by the tax in its first 45 years of existence. The shortfall between 2011 and 2016 is nearly $2 trillion.
And if you haven’t heard, most other tax revenues are more than spoken for.
Medicare is so central to the nation’s budgetary problems, and yet so frightening to touch, that the past workweek for members of the world’s greatest deliberative body regarding the country’s most important business went like this: Vote nay to the House Republican budget plan; vote super-nay (97-0) to the president’s budget plan; hear the majority party’s leader say “it would be foolish” for his caucus even to propose its own budget; declare it quittin’ time and head home.
The political temptation to interpret the past week’s results as an excuse to punt again, while great, would be harmful. So harmful, in fact, that former President Bill Clinton was overheard telling Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who authored the GOP’s budget plan and Medicare-overhaul proposal, to keep pursuing reform (if not that particular proposal).
Other Democrats ought to pay attention. There is a reason virtually no public program for senior citizens is aging well, from Medicare and Social Security to the majority of pensions for state workers and, in metro Atlanta, many county and city retirement plans. They were designed for a different era, then robbed or neglected as the world changed around them.
All of which means salvaging them is transforming them.
There are many differences between this debate and the Obamacare debates, during which Democrats (wrongfully) labeled the GOP the “party of no” and which now may lead those same Democrats to declare turnabout is fair play.
First, reforming Medicare is fixing an existing entitlement, not adding a new one.
Second, Democrats’ carping about the GOP was purely cynical: Their hurdle to passing Obamacare was getting other Democrats on board, not the vastly outnumbered Republicans. Now, in divided government, the two parties have to work together or let things fester until 2013 or later.
But most important, there’s only so much life left in Medicare for politicians to squeeze out for their own benefit.
– By Kyle Wingfield
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
138 comments Add your comment
Bill
May 29th, 2011
10:21 am
Micheal Smith,
I believe that I offered an alternative to doing nothing. How do you think the majority of Americans would respond if you asked them : should we spend less on the military and shift that money to healthcare?
independent thinker
May 29th, 2011
10:26 am
For those pinheads who believe the garbage about the US having the best health care system in the world here is the World Health Organization’s ranking of every country that has better health care
system than the US free enterprise (make everyone rich but the patient)model which the Repubs espouse as holy gospel:
1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 United Kingdom
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland
21 Belgium
22 Colombia
23 Sweden
24 Cyprus
25 Germany
26 Saudi Arabia
27 United Arab Emirates
28 Israel
29 Morocco
30 Canada
31 Finland
32 Australia
33 Chile
34 Denmark
35 Dominica
36 Costa Rica
37 United States of America
So much for free enterprise health care.
Left wing management
May 29th, 2011
10:50 am
MHS: “LWM if there is no profit to be made in treatment of the sick do you really think you will be able to find a doctor anywhere? Have drugs? Hospitals?”
You’re reducing the notion of making a decent wage to making a ‘profit’, a “return on investment” and other such obscenities.
The fact that in our time it’s so difficult not to make this mistake indicates the stranglehold the capitalist logic has on our public services.
The health of citizens is a basic necessity of life and profiteers have no business in the basic delivery of that necessity. The only ROI here is the health of actual human beings, which of course the profiteers have no interest is. Let them go elsewhere in search of their gravy train. Let them seek it on Casino Wall St.
Just Saying..
May 29th, 2011
11:07 am
Death panels! Unplug Grandma! People who live in glass Houses…
Mary Elizabeth
May 29th, 2011
11:15 am
Please read the following information, entitled: “CBO: Seniors would pay much more for Medicare under Ryan plan.”
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2011/April/06/CBO-Seniors-Pay-More-Medicare-Ryan-Plan.aspx
Fund Medicare, as it presently is, by cutting tax subsidies to corporations, raise taxes somewhat, esp. by letting Bush tax cuts for wealthy expire, cut fraud and waste in current Medicare.
Look outside the given “box” for answers; the “box” is microscopic looking only at “saving” Medicare by providing vouchers. Shift focus from Medicare cuts to cuts in military budget and cuts in tax subsidies to corporations and let Bush tax cuts expire for all.
.
Bart Abel
May 29th, 2011
11:30 am
RE: “What’s really scary? Acting like nothing’s wrong with Medicare”
I’m frustrated with the headline of this article. Of course Democrats aren’t pretending like nothing’s wrong with Medicare. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The health care law that passed last year is expected to be so effective at reducing the cost of Medicare that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will reduce the deficit by $1 trillion in the out years. It does this by phasing out the expensive and inefficient subsidies to private insurers, cracking down on waste, fraud and abuse, and modifying the payment formula so providers begin to paid for outcomes rather than procedures. The new health care law also established the Independent Payment Advisory Board to reduce costs and restrain the growth of Medicare spending. Republicans want to repeal all these cost saving measures.
In addition, Democrats want to allow the government to use its bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries. Republicans won’t allow it.
Democrats also wanted a public option which would allow anybody to buy into Medicare to allow premiums from healthy people to offset the cost of Medicare for sick people. More cost sharing or “pooling of risk” would drive down the cost of Medicare for all. Republicans won’t allow this either.
Whether you like the new health care law or not, whether you like the proposals that weren’t able to be included in the health care law or not, nobody should pretend that Democrats are acting like nothing is wrong with Medicare. In fact, Obama’s repeatedly made the argument for passing the health care law to reduce the growth of medicare (”cost curve”) over time.
Ironically, Republicans retook the House last year, in part, because they ran claiming that Democrats cut Medicare benefits (remember death panels) and that Republicans would save it. Talk about bait-and-switch.
Michael H. Smith
May 29th, 2011
11:31 am
Yeah, okay, Bill, if that is what you believe fine. I simply know differently and better than to accept what you said.
Michael H. Smith
May 29th, 2011
11:39 am
LWM
How you think making a decent wage is possible without making profits?
Good look on forcing doctors to do your biding in treating the sick at no profit to pay them a decent wage, when already Medicaid patients cannot find a doctor to treat them because the doctors are being forced to take less than a decent fee – I mean, wage.
Michael H. Smith
May 29th, 2011
11:42 am
I’m frustrated with the headline of this article. Of course Democrats aren’t pretending like nothing’s wrong with Medicare. Nothing could be further from the truth.
At least you got that much right.
PS. Off to do some slave labor before my Master kicks my… you got the picture, back to the honey-do list.
Alan
May 29th, 2011
11:46 am
Michael Smith – you want war bubba? Hell we will bring it right to the front door of your double wide, and I promise you, YOU WILL LOOSE!
Michael H. Smith
May 29th, 2011
12:03 pm
In that case I have nothing to worry about, Allen – I don’t have a double wide!
Michael H. Smith
May 29th, 2011
12:23 pm
In addition, Democrats want to allow the government to use its bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries. Republicans won’t allow it
Yeah, if that is true, then why did YOUR DEMOCRATS defeat a Democrat amendment sponsored by Senator Brain Dorgan (D). Oh you should have heard Senator Frank Lautenberg spouting the BUSH mantra nearly word for word to defeat the re-importation of prescription drugs. I mean, you gotta give to your guy Frank Lautenberg, libs. He does a better impersonation of BUSH than George Dubya can do of himself.
And, Obama gave the right to bargain away in a deal he made with BIG PHARMA!
Wake up people, when it comes to dealing with BIG PHARMA we only have a very few that will stand up for us. People like Ron Paul (R) and the former Senator Dorgan (D).
You want to talk about foreign aid wrongly given, then why do we Americans have to pay high prices for our drugs, just so people in other countries that probably hate us, can get their drugs on the cheap? Angry yet? Still don’t want to make any changes?
Michael H. Smith
May 29th, 2011
1:30 pm
More cost sharing or “pooling of risk” would drive down the cost of Medicare for all.
Neither will your Democrats allow individuals in the states to form, independent of absolute Federal Government ownership and control, non-profit member owned and controlled healthcare insurance Co Ops with all the elements I have written about in the past. Which one of those elements is the re-importation and bulk purchasing of prescription drugs and medical devices. It is in both of these areas where the highest profit margins exist.
When your Democrats give-up federal ownership and control of the entitlements to the individuals in the same fashion as the federal government now allows individuals to manage their own IRA’s and, AND, enacts a Constitution amendment that does two things: 1) Fully funds the entitlements before one penny more can be appropriated for any other government spending, including the operation of the federal government itself 2) Shall produce a balanced budget which only allows for deficit spending to pay for war or natural disasters, then I might have a reason to believe the “dishonest ponzi brokers” of the past have stop dealing dishonestly with respects to our future and that of our posterity.
Kyle Wingfield
May 29th, 2011
1:42 pm
(not-so) independent thinker: The WHO study that came up with those rankings has been roundly criticized as a pseudo-intellectual, ideological sham that had nothing to do with measuring actual quality of health care.
See here for an excellent overview: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-worst-study-ever/
The article includes explanations like this:
“According to WHO, ‘Financial fairness is best served by more, as well as by more progressive, prepayment in place of out-of-pocket expenditure. And the latter should be small not only in the aggregate but relative to households’ ability to pay.’
“This matter-of-fact endorsement of wealth redistribution and centralized administration should have had nothing to do with WHO’s assessment of the actual quality of health care under different systems. But instead, it was used as the definition of quality. For the authors of the study, the policy recommendation preceded the research. Automatically, this pushed capitalist countries that rely more on market incentives to the bottom of the list and rewarded countries that finance health care by centralized government-controlled single-payer systems. In fact, two of the major index factors, Health Distribution and Responsiveness Distribution, did not even measure health care itself. They were both strictly measures of equal distribution of health and equal distribution of health-care delivery.”
Bart Abel
May 29th, 2011
2:05 pm
Kyle’s link above goes to Commentary Magazine’s site. In the “About Us” section of this site, it describes itself as “the flagship of neoconservatism.” It seems to me that this criticism of the World Health Organization study as a “pseudo-intellectual endorsement of wealth redistribution” is more of a reflection of Commentary Magazine’s bias than the WHO’s.
Their problem with the WHO study seems to be, in part, that it measures whether poor and middle class people have equal access to quality health care. Maybe it’s just me, but I believe that most reasonable people would consider such assess to be a good thing and worth factoring into such rankings. Having the best quality health care in the world doesn’t mean much if a significant portion of the population can’t access it.
I Report (-: You Whine )-: Thee Magnificent!!! mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
May 29th, 2011
3:34 pm
KABUL, Afghanistan – Nine NATO service members were killed Thursday in Afghanistan, including seven U.S. troops among eight who died when a powerful bomb exploded in a field where they were patrolling on foot, officials said.
Back in the days when Bushie was the prezident, the next paragraph in yon story would have been something like this-
Bush refused to give them body armor, blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh. Their mommies had to have a bake sale just so their sons could have bullets, blaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh. WWWAAAAaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh, ew.
But now that obozo is, uh, “in charge-”
Last year, the Pentagon provided $495 million to buy 34 tethered surveillance blimps that give troops a bird’s eye view of certain areas and sent in more unmanned surveillance aircraft so route-clearance patrols would have the benefit of full-motion video. The Pentagon also delivered more than 5,000 hand-held bomb detectors, improved training and sent additional equipment to Afghanistan to counter the threat.
Bark, bark, lap doggies.
Lil' Barry Bailout
May 29th, 2011
4:33 pm
Bart Abel
May 29th, 2011
11:30 am
—————————
If your Idiot Messiah’s Obozocare plan is such a great idea, why is Medicare scheduled to collapse in twelve or thirteen years?
Idiot Messiah: Liar. Failure.
Lil' Barry Bailout
May 29th, 2011
4:35 pm
BTW, I learned today that my Dad’s health care plan was discontinued thanks to Obozocare. Whatever happened to “if you like your plan, you can keep it”?
Idiot Messiah: Liar. But we knew that.
MarkV
May 29th, 2011
4:44 pm
Kyle, regardless of the validity of the WHO study ranking, you cannot deny that the US spends much more per capita for health care without achieving a correspondingly better health than many countries with universal health care.
Michael H. Smith
May 29th, 2011
5:38 pm
The federal government cannot force a doctor to treat you without agreeable just compensation and the federal government is broke, has no money. Now how is your federal broke government which has no money that cannot pay its’ bills without borrowing money from China going to guarantee you access to anything, when China can one day up and say, no more loans?
From each according to their ability, to each according to their need: Until you run out of “access” to other people’s money.
The federal government is one of the worst managers of money per capita in the world: Them I should trust with my “safety net”?
MarkV
May 29th, 2011
7:21 pm
The whole talk about federal government being broke, cannot pay bills, is a worst manager of money, etc., is a claptrap used only to force decisions favorable to a certain section of the population. The government is us, all the people, and each of us wants certain things to be done by the government we have elected, but we just want to pay only for what each of us wants.
Michael H. Smith
May 29th, 2011
9:03 pm
Like $14 trillion dollars of debt is claptrap invented to force government to favor paying it bills and the need to borrow more money to repay borrowed money and continue to operate is claptrap? It is in very point of fact, being broke, unable to pay bills, a government repaying borrowed money with more borrowed money, because that government cannot control its’ spending addiction, which only the worst mangers of money in the world would ever allow to happen is in all honestly an UNTRUSTWORTHY government.
Lil' Barry Bailout
May 29th, 2011
9:27 pm
A balanced budget is favorable to all segments of society except for parasites and government workers.
Jefferson
May 29th, 2011
9:49 pm
Medicare has a funding problem, fund the program and the Americans that pay for it will be happy.
Michael H. Smith
May 29th, 2011
9:57 pm
Nothing like being forced to pay the bills created by the mental-illness of spendthrifts!
Can’t we just put them away in communal asylums somewhere as a matter of serving the public good, give’em all the Kool-Aid their kidneys can stand, put plastic protective covers over all the bedding and let’em weave baskets for the rest of their lives in order to keep their hands off other people’s money. I mean, wouldn’t this be a humane cost efficient method of treating a terminal fiscal disease.
Michael H. Smith
May 29th, 2011
10:05 pm
Medicare has a funding problem called a Congress that over-promises more than is fiscally possible to deliver.
Michael H. Smith
May 29th, 2011
10:37 pm
Remember Obama’s use of the Postal Service as an example when he was pushing ObamaCare off on the public?
Um, how’s the Postal Service doing these days, Mr. Obama?
Left wing management
May 29th, 2011
10:59 pm
A balanced budget is favorable to all segments of society except for parasites and government workers.
Pfft.
C’mon. You don’t care about a “balanced budget”. If you did, you’d acknowledge what you know is true, which is that we could essentially take care of our fiscal problems by merely returning to the tax rates of the Clinton years.
MarkV
May 29th, 2011
11:09 pm
Who gets the money spent by the government? Mostly Americans. The problem of the deficit and debt is mosty that the government gives people the money they have requested, but does not take enough from them to cover those expenses. I bet all those people who complain about government spending too much would complain even more if the government did not support programs they benefit from.
Jefferson
May 29th, 2011
11:36 pm
Medicare taxes have not kept pace with medical cost increases. Blame the medical industry not the taxpayer, they pay — they want the service. What you are scared of is solving the problem. Look who is getting rich on medicine, there is the only place to hold the line on cost increases. Private insurance enriches too many, that’s why is costs so much and is killing its golden goose.
Michael H. Smith
May 30th, 2011
8:28 am
Gee, I wish the federal government would start cutting programs just so I could find something to complain about. Let me know when the federal government has been cut by 90%, then I’ll start complaining about the 10% of federal government I actually need being threatened by the anti-government anarchist.
Michael H. Smith
May 30th, 2011
8:57 am
Look at the profits for each sector of the medical industry and you’ll find the real demon is not private insurance.
Who Is Making the Biggest Profits From U.S. Healthcare? You Might Be Surprised . . .
…“Pharmaceutical companies have a profit margin of 16.4 percent,” Newman reports, “seventh highest of the 215 industries that Morningstar tracks.”
…When you add in the cost of drugs administered in a hospital, a nursing home, or in a doctor’s office –plus the cost of the many medical devices that drug-makers now sell—you find that their share of the $2.6 trillion pie rises to 16%. And if anything, those devices—ranging from stents to artificial knees—are even more over-priced than the drugs.)
Prescription-drug makers are not the only companies turning a nice profit on our health care, other industries with profit margins well above the 2.2 percent median for all U.S. industries include: healthcare information (9.4 percent), home healthcare firms (8.5 percent), medical labs (8.2 percent), and generic drug-makers (6.5 percent).
http://www.healthbeatblog.com/2009/08/who-is-making-the-biggest-profits-from-us-healthcare-you-might-be-surprised-.html
Michael H. Smith
May 30th, 2011
9:28 am
No matter which way the debate goes on Medicare I’ll probably be locked into it because of my age. But if I could get vouchers, have an enhanced version of health savings account, have a healthcare Co Op similar to Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, Washington here in Georgia to join, which would be allowed to buy re-imported drugs and medical devices, with bulk purchase privileges, and some State of Georgia sponsored funding such as from gaming and sin taxes, I would drop traditional Medicare, ObamaCare and the federal government ownership, control-dependency of my healthcare, like a hot rock burning my hand to take a Ryan voucher!
Reading assignment for inquiring minds:
Group Health Cooperative
http://www.ghc.org/
independent thinker
May 30th, 2011
12:11 pm
as pointed out by Bart Abel @2:05 pm yesterday, Kyle is referencing a highly conservative commentary on the WHO report. Yes it does not strictly look at longetivity, infant mortality and other health factors for its assessment. What it did find is what everyone actually agrees on and that is that is we have the most expensive health care system per capita in the world and the least efficient. I believe that is why even Newt and the Repubs wanted to push through a federal single payer system in the early nineties,
Here are the factors the WHO study evaluated that Kyle and the right wing find so offfensive:
In designing the framework for health system performance, WHO broke new methodological ground, employing a technique not previously used for health systems. It compares each country’s system to what the experts estimate to be the upper limit of what can be done with the level of resources available in that country. It also measures what each country’s system has accomplished in comparison with those of other countries.
WHO’s assessment system was based on five indicators: overall level of population health; health inequalities (or disparities) within the population; overall level of health system responsiveness (a combination of patient satisfaction and how well the system acts); distribution of responsiveness within the population (how well people of varying economic status find that they are served by the health system); and the distribution of the health system’s financial burden within the population (who pays the costs).”"
If one looks at out health care system as a cost of GDP go to
Life Expectancy vs Health Care Spending in 2007 for OECD Countries. The data source is http://www.oecd.org.
For half of the cost per GDP , Japan has a higher life expectancy. Do you really think that letting private insuarance regulate the cost of health care with employers taking unlimited deductions for contributions that we can ever have a less costly system?
Independent
May 30th, 2011
1:21 pm
Medicare taxes only cover half of Medicare expenses. Medicare Pard D is 25% of Medicare expenses. Medicare Pard D was never paid for: no new taxes were incorporated when it was rolled out. The people receiving Medicare Pard D never paid any extra to receove it. That is one-half of the problem there. Either do away with Medicare Pard D or up taxes to cover it.
killerj
May 30th, 2011
2:34 pm
Golly Gee Whiz,and just how many illegals are on the bus?many factors including using your tax money instead of what it is intended for plays a big part my friend.Go Tea Party.
Michael H. Smith
May 30th, 2011
7:11 pm
The united nations is not what most people consider a centrist organization. Certainly the UN and its’ agencies are no gatekeepers of gospel truth.
It is also very doubtful that Newt and the Republicans desired, let alone were pushing for a single payer system in the ’90s, since HilaryCare was single payer system and they all opposed it furiously.
Japan faces major problems which will challenge their single payer system in the way the US now faces with our entitlements – aging population. Very doubtful Japan will be able to maintain its single payer system without making drastic reductions in services or going to a hybrid form of single payer as now the UK is undertaking with its nationalized healthcare system. Which is not to say a hybrid mix of single payer/ private insurer is bad, considering that is exactly what Switzerland has as a system and it appears to work very well for the Swiss. But, then again, that is in reality some of what the U.S. has had since the advent of Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP, though, the US system is not nearly as good a model when compared to the Swiss.
However, the Swiss model could be replicated with the government portion replaced by Healthcare Co Ops like the one found in Seattle Washington. With a few tweaks including various forms of revenue streams other than depending solely on taxation, the Group Health Cooperative model could be improved. Likely at lowered costs, increased coverage with less exposure to the political risk of cuts or loss of services or care.
Lil' Barry Bailout
May 30th, 2011
7:55 pm
Jefferson: fund the program and the Americans that pay for it will be happy.
————————
Sure…who doesn’t like free stuff paid for by others?
People who aren’t parasites, that’s who.