Why Does the GOP Hate Senior Citizens?
First of all, I do not know the answer to that question but it sure seems that they do. What other possible reason could there be for their all-out war on Social Security and Medicare? There is no justification for any attempts to destroy these two incredibly successful programs. This blog will deal specifically with Medicare - the federal health insurance program for people who are 65 or older, certain younger people with disabilities, and people with End-Stage Renal Disease (permanent kidney failure requiring dialysis or a transplant, sometimes called ESRD).
So, let’s start with a short history lesson –
Talk about a national health insurance system for Americans goes all the way back to the days of President Theodore Roosevelt, whose platform included a health insurance plan when he ran for president in 1912. Unfortunately, the idea for a national health plan didn’t get much traction until it was pushed by President Harry S. Truman. He fought to get a plan in place that would provide health coverage to individuals, paying for expenses like doctor visits, hospital visits, laboratory services, dental care and nursing services. Sadly, he was unsuccessful and it would be another 20 years until some form of national health insurance would become a reality. What would finally pass would be Medicare for Americans 65 and older, instead of the earlier proposals to cover qualifying Americans of all ages.
In 1965 Medicare was created because insurance companies really didn’t to sell insurance to senior citizens. To accomplish this, insurers implemented the practice of charging them five to ten times as much as they charged younger people for the exact same coverage. To make matters even worse, people with pre-existing conditions were not even considered for coverage. This resulted in more and more senior citizens without coverage to the point that, when Medicare came into existence, only about I in 4 seniors had adequate coverage.
Seems sensible enough that we would want our parents and grandparents to live out their golden years without the burden of worrying about health care costs. But wait, enter Paul Ryan and the insurance lobby. Apparently none of them have elderly parents or grandparents because they are again trotting out the idea of privatizing Medicare. Why would they do this and who would benefit?
The why is answered in one word – GREED!! The insurance companies, lobbyists and members of Congress want more money than they are already getting.
Are you familiar with the Medicare Advantage The private health plan within Medicare) program? It was created during the Bush administration with more than just a little bit of input from the insurance industry. Much like Medicare Part D, it has helped drive the record profits many insurance companies have seen recently. But they want more and they want to line their pockets at the expense of our senior citizens.
Since the term “rigged” has been getting a lot of notice lately I will use it to describe exactly what this system is (was). Medicare Advantage was rigged but the Bush administration and their friends in the insurance industry to all but guarantee enormous profits. The government promised large bonuses to the insurance companies just to get them to participate and by the time the Affordable Care Act as being debated and passed it was estimated by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission that these “bonuses” (in actuality over-payments) were costing 14% more than the cost of traditional Medicare. In fact, from 2004 to 2008 these “bonuses” amounted to over $33 BILLION.
The case for privatization is, as I already mentioned, GREED. When you consider that Medicare is an incredibly efficient and effective system with administrative costs under 4%. This is an absolutely amazing figure when you compare it to traditional companies. According to Consumers Union:
“There are many reasons for this, but obviously it helps that Medicare doesn’t need advertising, nor does it have to return profits to its investors. And it doesn’t have the same massive infrastructure for denying legitimate claims–lawyers parsing contract language, claims administrators reducing the reimbursement or denying it altogether.
Further, Medicare reduces costs all down the chain. Providers must spend far less time and energy handling Medicare billing because it always works the same way for every patient. Private insurance billing is responsible for significant cost increases because doctors must spend so much time dealing with all the different standards, forms and claims processes.”
Some will whine that there is Medicare fraud. No argument here but it is such a small amount that it certainly doesn’t warrant the attention some give it and it definitely is not an excuse for changing the whole system. Most of the fraud is committed by providers charging for care they didn’t provide or care that was unneeded. He thing is providers who defraud Medicare also defraud the private insurance companies.
A 2012 study by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation found that privatizing Medicare would cause 59% of recipients to pay higher premiums.
By giving Senior Citizens vouchers and telling them to go buy private insurance we risk reverting back to the pre-1965 era when more than half our Seniors had no health insurance. It would not be long before insurance companies raised rates and deductibles on the elderly making the insurance either inadequate or unaffordable.
Medicare is NOT an entitlement. Workers have paid for it out of every paycheck for years. It IS a “contract by America with America that we will all have adequate healthcare in our old age. Turning Medicare over to private insurance companies will cost individuals so much that it will effectively end that contract. “