Seniors....this is a must read

If a good Health Care Reform gets voted in, Seniors have more to win than lose. That won't be what happens if we don't get a good Health Care Bill.

Why seniors would be health reform winners, not losers

HOWARD GLECKMAN
Last updated: September 3rd, 2009 12:26 AM (PDT)

Opponents of health reform have targeted seniors with a blunt message: You will be big losers if “Obama-care” is enacted. In the words of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele: “Senior citizens will pay a steeper price and will have their treatment options reduced or rationed.”

Scary words. But, in truth, seniors are likely to be big winners if responsible health reform passes and prime victims if it fails. The casualties will not only be today’s elders, but the Baby Boomers, who are the next generation of seniors. They will all pay the price if the existing health system is allowed to fester.

It is true that, today, seniors have a pretty good deal. Nearly all those over 65 already have insurance through Medicare — a government program. Seniors and younger people with disabilities who are both very poor and unable to care for themselves are also eligible for long-term care benefits through Medicaid, which is run jointly by the federal government and the states.

So if seniors already have coverage, don’t they have everything to lose from change? Isn’t cost control just a fancy euphemism for cutting benefits? And what about those bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who doesn’t?

These claims are both irresponsible and wrong. But their biggest flaw is that they ignore the real problem: Without fundamental changes, Medicare and Medicaid are unsustainable. Like a poorly built house that has gone too long without repairs, they will soon collapse without major renovations. And seniors will face both massive tax hikes and huge increases in their monthly insurance premiums.

To understand why, remember that Medicaid and Medicare Part A hospital insurance are funded with tax revenues. Medicare Part B coverage for doctor visits and Part D drug coverage are financed through a combination of taxes and premiums. Many seniors also pay extra for Medicare Supplement (Medigap) insurance.

In just 10 years, according to the Medicare trustees, Part B premiums are expected to increase from about $96 a month to more than $130, while Part D premiums will rise to $50. Add a few hundred dollars more each month for Medigap coverage and many seniors will be spending $5,000 annually on Medicare. Higher-income seniors will pay far more — as much as $420 a month for Part B alone.

That is the future seniors face if we do nothing.

The pressure on taxes will be even greater. In a decade, nearly 30 cents of every federal tax dollar will go to Medicare and Medicaid. By 2035, these two programs will spend more than 40 percent of our taxes. That means we’ll need huge tax hikes to pay for these programs and keep the rest of the government running,

As for rationing, Medicare already decides what to cover. Nobody seriously expects it to pay for any treatment patients want. It also rations by deciding how it pays physicians and hospitals. For instance, doctors are paid more for tests than office visits, so patients get more MRIs and less face time with physicians.

Health reform is not about choosing between rationing or not. Rather, it is about whether we will continue to spend health dollars in the crazy way we do now or find a better way. Done right, it can mean less treatment but better health.

One example: Critics of reform call “comparative effectiveness research” a backdoor trick to deny care for the frail elderly. They are wrong. Done well, it can improve care at less cost.

Today we know very little about how medications affect seniors. So they often get too many drugs that can make them ill, or even kill them. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a research program to tell us what drugs work best for the elderly?

How about Medicaid? Today, because the program is required to pay only for nursing home care, beneficiaries are more likely to get their assistance in a facility than at home.

Health reform could give consumers more choice. Instead of a government bureaucrat saying you must move into a nursing home to get benefits, seniors would have more opportunity to decide where they want to live. It is hard to see how that makes them worse off.

Critics are right to say that poorly designed could put seniors’ health at risk. But with well-structured reforms, seniors would get better medical and long-term term care, and get it in a way they and the nation can afford. That’s why they, as much as anyone, should be supporting health reform.

Howard Gleckman, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, is author of “Caring for Our Parents” and a frequent writer and speaker on long-term care issues. He wrote this for the McClatchy-Tribune News Service.

So before you believe what one party or the other tells you, check for yourselves. Do the work of research! Don't just believe what you hear. Your life and health depends on it!

GOP make it sound like they're all for Medicare

They are whipping up the simple people and the politically disengaged people to think that Obama and the Congress will take away or at the least weaken Medicare when they are putting together Health Care Reform.

But, like me, I bet you didn't know that as recently as this past April the GOP in the House tried to weaken Medicare by allowing private insurance companies to take it over. It was part of the GOP Health Care Reform bill they proposed.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

House, Senate budget plans boost Obama agenda but expose vulnerabilities
At the same time, the debate also exposed
political weaknesses in his House GOP rivals.
Republicans in the House had even more
defections on their alternative budget, losing
37 of the chamber's more moderate members
in a 293-137 tally that rejected cuts to
Medicare and the Medicaid health care
program for the poor and disabled.

What is more, GOP leaders are clearly
nervous that votes in favor of the GOP
alternative have exposed their members to
political danger.

The plan, drafted by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, top Republican on the House Budget Committee, called for eventually replacing the traditional Medicare program with subsidies to help retirees enroll in private health care plans. Current beneficiaries would keep their coverage and those 55 and older also would go into the current system.

Critics of the plan said the Medicare subsidies would inevitably not keep pace with inflation and that people in poor health might end up uninsured, while many needy people on Medicaid could lose coverage.

And from the Washington Monthly:

But did Republicans vote to "end," "abolish," and "kill" Medicare? It's provocative, but it's a supportable claim. In April, 137 Republicans voted in support of a GOP alternative budget. It didn't generate a lot of attention, but the plan, drafted by the House Budget Committee's Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called for "replacing the traditional Medicare program with subsidies to help retirees enroll in private health care plans."

The AP noted at the time that Republican leaders were "clearly nervous that votes in favor of the GOP alternative have exposed their members to political danger."

So as much as the GOP say they won't touch Medicare, they already tried to. So far it was a dirty secret that the Media hasn't put out there. But I'm passing this along and hope that others will too. Hypocrisy, they name is GOP!

The more Republicans press Dems on Medicare, the more we're likely to hear about the fact that a majority of the House Republican Caucus voted this year to kill Medicare as we know it, privatizing it out of existence.

Canadians Compare our Health Care to Theirs. They're Happy with Theirs

Canadian Doctors for Medicare hosted a celebration of Medicare in Canada. The speakers included Roy Romanow, former Saskatchewan Premiere and Commissioner on Health Care in Canada. They tell Americans that Canadian universal health care works and encourage Americans to implement a single payer universal health care systems.



Medicare for all would cost less in the long run and can be cost controlled much more easily than monitoring all the Insurance companies. Our health is not a commodity to be traded on the Market and it shouldn't be a for profit business to insure our health.

Things you need to know

Knowledge is Power. So here's a bit of education for you about Health Insurance Companies.

First, from NavyBlueWife at Fire Dog Lake telling me something I didn't know:

The Sunday morning political talk programs were filled to the brim with health care reform discussions, and central to these discussions is the idea that the insurance industry needs competition. Competition, in the form of a public option or in health care cooperatives, is supposed to level the playing field and bring down premiums for all Americans while providing as close to universal coverage as we can do right now.

There's just one itty bitty, teeny weeny problem. The insurance industry has federal IMMUNITY from competition!

The federal government has not been able to attack the insurance companies through federal anti-trust laws for over 60 years. Under the McCarran-Ferguson Act passed in 1945, insurance companies (and Major League Baseball!) are specifically excluded from federal anti-trust laws as long as the state regulates in that area, and federal anti-trust laws will apply ONLY in cases of boycott, coercion, and intimidation.

Under the McCarran-Ferguson Act, Big Insurance is allowed to collect and SHARE data with each other about claims. With this information, Big Insurance can fix prices, set coverage requirements, outline conditions for coverage denials (like pre-existing conditions), and many, many more.

That's right, folks! Big Insurance can plot together to bring us all down!

This problem is one of the biggest when it comes to creating insurance industry competition, and not one single major news outlet, pundit or other talking head has covered it as of my publishing. In fact, the only time where I saw anti-trust regulation brought up was a minor squawking by Big Insurance. They claimed that they actually would be in trouble under the anti-trust laws if they were forced to work together to reduce costs to consumers. But the laws don't apply, so what's the problem, Big Insurance?? Read more at link

This is information on how Blue Cross/Blue Shield was formed and how it became a for profit company. h/t to Crank Bait at Sam Seder Show Blog:

Dr. Justin Ford Kimball, a Baylor University administrator, is generally recognized as the originator of Blue Cross. Kimball noticed that among the university hospital's unpaid bills were those of a disproportionate number of local school teachers. In 1929, he addressed this problem by organizing a plan in which teachers could be covered for a three-week hospital stay in a semi-private room by prepaying as little as 50 cents a month. The first group health plan was off the ground when 1,250 Dallas-area teachers enrolled at once.

Other groups of Dallas employees joined the program, and it began to attract attention across the United States. Similar plans sprang up in Iowa and Illinois. Like the Dallas prototype, those plans involved only one hospital. In the early 1930s, plans were created that offered customers a choice of different hospitals in their communities. California, New Jersey, and New York were among the first locations for programs of that type. The Blue Cross name and symbol were developed in 1934 by E. A. van Steenwyk, a pioneer of St. Paul, Minnesota's group health plan. By 1935, there were 15 Blue Cross plans in 11 states. The following year, the American Hospital Association (AHA) created the Committee on Hospital Services to oversee the growing batch of Blue Cross organizations nationwide. The Committee's early leader was C. Rufus Rorem, who had been involved with the AHA for several years. By 1938, there were 38 Blue Cross plans in the United States, with a total enrollment of 1.4 million. In comparison, only about 100,000 people were covered for hospitalization by private insurance companies at that time.

Meanwhile, a similar movement had begun for covering the costs of physicians' services. In the Pacific Northwest, a few lumber and mining companies had begun making arrangements to pay doctors a monthly fee for providing their employees with health care services. The first of these plans appeared in Tacoma, Washington, in 1917. The first modern Blue Shield plan was established in 1939 in California. Modeled on the earlier programs, the California Plan enabled its customers to receive physician services for $1.70 a month. Only those with income under $3,000 a year were eligible for the program. The medical societies of other states began to develop similar programs, and in 1946 the first handful of such plans banded into a national group called the Associated Medical Care Plans, overseen by the American Medical Association (AMA). This group informally adopted the Blue Shield as its symbol two years later, and it eventually became known as the Blue Shield Association.

Between 1940 and 1945, the number of Blue Cross plans operating nationwide grew from 56 to 80, and enrollment increased from 6 million to 19 million. Blue Shield's enrollment was approximately 3 million. This growth was largely due to the wartime emphasis on fringe benefits as a way to increase wages without boosting salaries. In 1946, Rorem resigned as executive director of the AHA commission overseeing Blue Cross plans, and was replaced by Richard M. Jones, whom Rorem had hired as head of public relations. The organization's name was then changed to the Blue Cross Commission.

In 1948, Blue Cross and Blue Shield agreed to merge. The move was blocked by the AMA, however, on the grounds that such cooperation between hospitals and physicians could lead to actions in restraint of trade. Nevertheless, the Blues began working together around that time on public policy issues, while remaining independent, competing entities. To facilitate their continued growth, both Blues set up nonprofit agencies to coordinate the activities of their member plans. The Blue Cross Commission established Health Services, Inc. (HSI), a stock insurance company, to coordinate national enrollment in Blue Cross plans and to act as an underwriter to make up for differences in benefits between member plans when national contracts made it necessary. The Blue Cross Association was created as a holding company for HSI stock, which was actually owned by the plans themselves. Blue Shield set up a similar structure, establishing Medical Indemnity of America (MIA) as its counterpart to HSI. Read more at link.

So the Insurance Companies have a law in place to help them take advantage of us. All of us!

And you learned how a non profit Insurance turned into a for profit.

So now you know a bit more to form a good decision about Health Care Reform.