Last month, after I posted about Seniors being selfish and not wanting to share their lucrative medical insurance with anyone else, some commenters thought I was being unfair and even a bit inflammatory.
Then today I read a NY Times story on Florida Senator Bill Nelson's attempts to beat back Medicare Advantage cuts and I realized that I might have earlier understated the case:
Seniors as a class (not every individual Senior, of course, but as a vote-in-high-numbers political demographic) are being selfish and acting no different than bankers, the military industrial complex or any other group that Progressives routinely challenge whenever they try to protect their fiscal position without regard to anyone else or the greater good. So why should progressives turn a blind eye to what Seniors are doing?
The argument after the jump ... what do you think?
First, the background (all excerpts are from the NY Times story):
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent federal body, says payments to the private [Medicare Advantage ] plans are, on average, 14 percent higher than what the government would spend for the same people in traditional Medicare.
Mr. Baucus’s bill would cut payments to Medicare Advantage plans by $123 billion over 10 years. Under a companion bill approved by three House committees, the cuts would total $156 billion. Mr. Obama proposed cuts totaling $175 billion. Insurers, he said, are getting "unwarranted subsidies" that "pad their profits but don’t improve the care of seniors."
Then, here's what Florida Senator Bill Nelson is doing to protect senior citizen's from this "intolerable" attack on their Medicare Advantage benefits:
Mr. Nelson, a Democrat, has a big problem. The bill taken up this week by the committee would cut Medicare payments to insurance companies that care for more than 10 million older Americans, including nearly one million in Florida. The program, known as Medicare Advantage, is popular because it offers extra benefits, including vision and dental care and even, in some cases, membership in health clubs or fitness centers.
"It would be intolerable to ask senior citizens to give up substantial health benefits they are enjoying under Medicare," said Mr. Nelson, who has been deluged with calls and complaints from constituents [emphasis mine]. "I am offering an amendment to shield seniors from those benefit cuts." ...
The cost of Mr. Nelson’s proposed fix — to preserve benefits for many people enrolled in the private Medicare plans — could total $40 billion over 10 years, and that could also be a problem for the White House. Mr. Obama has promised not to sign a health bill that increases the deficit, and so far Mr. Nelson has not said precisely how he would pay for his amendment ...
So the crux of the argument is whether Medicare Advantage is a boondoogle for the insurance companies worthy of cutting so the savings can be used to expand access (as this other Obama initiative is doing: Bill Would End Bank Subsidies For College Loans; Savings To Fund More Student Loans) or is it a necessary program from which Progressives would agree intolerable cuts should not be made?
This last tibit from story, however,
Humana, one of the nation’s largest insurers, has urged subscribers to contact their members of Congress and register their opposition to the cuts. "Millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable," Humana said in a recent letter to beneficiaries. On Monday, the Obama administration told Humana to "end immediately all such mailings to beneficiaries." It said the materials were "misleading and confusing." Insurers have contracts with Medicare, and under Medicare rules, many of their communications with beneficiaries need to be submitted to the government for review, administration officials said.
got me thinking about Humana and how lucrative their Medicare Advantage franchise must be if they're playing hardball trying to keep it. So I decided to go shopping and compare what kind of health insurance plans Humana would sell in Bill Nelson's Florida to a 64 and 65 year old man (eg, a private plan for the first and a Medicare Advantage one to the second).
I will post more about this in the future, but the bottom line is that for roughly comparable benefits (I know, I know, the devil is in the details but changes in the details would not change the overall argument), the 64 year old would pay $1,189 per month, $14,268 per year for an individual plan while the 65 year old would pay only $128 per month, $1,536 per year.
That's right, the monthly premium for a regular insurance plan would cover almost an entire year under Medicare Advantage. The regular plan is 929% more expensive than the Medicare Advantage plan.
So we're left with the fact that while medical expenses of seniors (on average) are substantially higher than those of younger people, the price they pay for Medicare Advantage is only 11% of what everyone else would pay for roughly comparable coverage.
Sounds like a sweetheart deal to me.
What do you think? Is it unfair? Is it reasonable to expect (and for progressives to insist) that Seniors actually, heaven forbid, give up some premium benefits so that every American can receive basic health insurance? While it's certainly true that not all Seniors think this way (the AARP readily comes to mind) as a political class (eg, letter writers attempting to influence Bill Nelson) are Seniors being as self-centered and selfish as those Progressives routinely and unashamedly rail against? And if so, why the silence on the left?