Medicare doesn't do anything to stop freeloading. It only provides access to people who *can't* afford insurance, not to those who *refuse* to buy health insurance but demand and receive care, and refuse to pay for it. The solutions to that are either squeezing blood from a stone or refusing to provide care. Neither is a viable option.
The viable options are all variants of the three I provided. "Individual mandate" is the only viable one where the individual pays for his own coverage and care under his own terms, and does not pay for the coverage and care of people who can pay but refuse. It is the only one that provides (near) universal coverage, demands personal responsibility, and maintains both private coverage and private care as the typical health care system.
Any variant of the other viable options would be far less conservative. Option 1 is clearly socialist. Option 2 is an unearned entitlement.
So how the hell is the only truly conservative option regularly decried by conservatives?
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We work together every damn day. --Jon Stewart
I recall when medicare was the government's solution to healthcare and I was forced to pay into it. It was planned by the government and came in wildly over budget and the government couldn't manage it, now the answer is more government (and more debt).
According to a Forbes op-ed
I like how you view forbes opinion as a source, you do realize opinion sections are just "rants from some random person" right? we all know the slogans, the problem is reality doesn't match up, you really think the health care system is perfect pre obamacare? are you really that blind?
and again you have no better plan, just criticize what works. you claim to not want government control, but this healthcare option is the least government control that solves the problems, go the republican way and people will be demanding true single payer health care. (except the people at the top of course)
You really don't understand Medicare. Part A is free, it pays for some hospital bills, no doctor visits and no meds.
The average soc sec check is $698.
The minimum paid for Medicare Part B is $99, some pay as much as $140 a month.
Then the person pays the first $220. of their medical expenses plus 20% of the rest.
If they want their meds covered, they must buy a supplement on top of that, it averages about $40. a month.
Doesn't leave much of the $698 for lodging, utilities and food.
Since signing up for it is voluntary, many are left with a choice. Sign up for part B and a supplement or eat.
This is why congress isn't on Medicare. All current and former members of congress have 100% of all medical expenses covered.
I like how you view forbes opinion as a source, you do realize opinion sections are just "rants from some random person" right? we all know the slogans, the problem is reality doesn't match up, you really think the health care system is perfect pre obamacare? are you really that blind?
and again you have no better plan, just criticize what works. you claim to not want government control, but this healthcare option is the least government control that solves the problems, go the republican way and people will be demanding true single payer health care. (except the people at the top of course)
Let's see if what the op-ed said about medicare is a rant:
Quote:
? Medicare is a taxpayer funded, government-run insurance program that is financially unsustainable in its current form. By all estimates, Medicare is spiraling into bankruptcy, with an unfunded liability of almost $38 trillion and a hospital insurance trust fund that will become insolvent in 2024, according to the 2012 Medicare Trustees Report.
? Medicare was already the single insurance program most likely to reject a claim, compared to all of the eight comparable private insurance plans studied in the AMA 2008 National Health Insurance Report Card. This rejection rate was double that of the private insurers? average ? those very same insurance companies vilified by President Obama as denying coverage to Americans.
? An increasing proportion of doctors are already not accepting Medicare patients. A 2008 report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent federal panel, said that 29 percent of its beneficiaries who were looking for a primary care doctor had a problem finding one. A 2008 survey by the Texas Medical Association that found that only 58 percent of the state?s doctors accepted new Medicare patients, and only 38 percent of primary care doctors did, a number shrinking due to government- decreed payment that is lower than cost. In the 2008 HSC national tracking survey, more than 20 percent of primary care doctors accepted no new Medicare patients (only 4.5 percent accepted no new privately insured patients) and about 40 percent of primary care doctors and 20 percent of specialists refused most new Medicare patients.
Yet, despite these well documented facts, our president and his supporters maintain that the way to ?save? Medicare is to markedly reduce payments to doctors and hospitals, and empower a new panel of bureaucrats charged with cutting payments even further. According to the Medicare Board of Trustees, ?an almost 31-percent reduction in Medicare payment rates for physician services will be implemented in 2013.? By 2019, these cuts are so draconian that payments become even lower than Medicaid, a system by which doctors already lose money and most refuse to accept patients. And contrary to those seeking other explanations, by far the most commonly cited reason given by doctors, whether primary care or specialist, to explain why they refuse government-insured patients is ?inadequate reimbursement.? It is either fantasy or intentional misstatement to deny that severe reductions in payments under the Obama health law will shrink access for seniors even further.
President Obama?s plan for Medicare will not simply reduce access to doctors. According to the Medicare Trustees, Medicare payment reductions under the new law will cause hospitals, nursing facilities, and home health agencies to operate at a loss - 15 percent lose money by 2019, 25 percent by 2030, and 40 percent by 2050. The Trustees Report concluded the obvious ? health care providers ?would have to withdraw from serving Medicare beneficiaries, or shift substantial portions of Medicare costs to their non-Medicare, non-Medicaid payers.? Can American families with private insurance who already pay almost $1,800 per year ? extra ? for the underpayment by Medicare and Medicaid, subsidizing public insurance by more than $88 billion dollars per year, afford to add even more because of the president?s law?
Signed into law by President Obama is another nefarious method of reducing Medicare payments. A wholly unaccountable, government appointed 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board, the IPAB, does not just ?recommend? changes to reimbursements. It has unprecedented power to reduce (but not to increase) payments to doctors that the Secretary of Health and Human Services is required to implement. To be sure, the IPAB acts independently of the people, immune from Congressional oversight, and even beyond control of the judiciary ? ensured in language within the law that isolates it from repeal. And while the president?s supporters defensively point to language that prohibits specific and overt ?rationing,? this is an implausible deniability, since everyone who bothers to consider the evidence recognizes the de facto rationing that will result from the IPAB?s mission of cutting payments to doctors and hospitals. More subtly, the president?s law shifts prioritization to generalist care at the expense of specialist care. Despite the enormous importance of specialty medical care and the fact that the need for specialists will vastly exceed specialist doctor growth, the ACA legislation increases financial reimbursement to primary care providers? necessarily taking payment away from specialists, the only doctors who actually have training in using sophisticated tests, complex technology, and novel treatments.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want Americans and their families to control their own health care decisions. Rather than pretending that Medicare is financially solvent, and ignoring the existing facts about the low acceptance of Medicare and the future restrictions that the Obama plan imposes upon health care for seniors, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are committed to maintaining health care excellence and access for current and future seniors.
The voucher system that the repubs are pushing would increase the percentage that the already overburdened seniors are paying. Many don't have the income to pay what Medicare presently costs. How would they possibly pay more?
The voucher system that the repubs are pushing would increase the percentage that the already overburdened seniors are paying. Many don't have the income to pay what Medicare presently costs. How would they possibly pay more?
people need to read between the lines, it is one thing to promote a voucher system that is cheaper, it's a different thing completely when you realize the vouchers are cheaper because they onloy pay for about 1/3 to 1/2 what equivalent medicare costs so people under 55 plan to spend a ton more money in retirement on healthcare, at least 10k more a year per person than you initially had budgeted
the only way a voucher system for medicare would work is with the anti-age based pricing of obamacare though to keep the prices reasonable.
Why shouldn't we establish a system that provides health care to those who can't afford it, or income to those who can't be expected to provide for themselves, such as the elderly and the infirm?
Because it meets the definition of the political buzzword "socialism"? Newsflash, but anything done by a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, could be accurately described as "socialism".
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We work together every damn day. --Jon Stewart
Why shouldn't we establish a system that provides health care to those who can't afford it, or income to those who can't be expected to provide for themselves, such as the elderly and the infirm?
Because it meets the definition of the political buzzword "socialism"? Newsflash, but anything done by a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, could be accurately described as "socialism".
The idea might not be so bad if the nation could afford it, but entitlements have gotten out of hand and continue to grow.
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