Yeah, I thought I'd inject a little quiet and unspoken (amazingly so!) reality into our current "debates."
There are important stories and FACTS slipping past the conventional wisdom, or at least, the conventional warfare, of our media climate.
Brought into the limelight, such FACTS might upset the roaring opposing sides in the entertaining (spell that R-A-T-I-N-G-S) conflict.
The Democrats in Congress and the President have quietly helped to save Medicare in ways that few people know.
If you're interested, come below the fold.
The argument AGAINST Medicare as we know it has been a strong one. I've asked about it here - when I see even progressive heroes like Markopolis and Roemer saying we've got a problem, I have to believe that we have a problem.
The problem: Medicare, by many reports, was running a 20 trillion $ unfunded liability years out. This scares the hell out of people and rightly so, and also provides lethal ammunition for the Ayn Rand acolytes (the Paul Ryans of the world).
http://www.healthbeatblog.com/...
From 2000 through 2009, Medicare’s outlays climbed by an average of 9.7 percent a year.
There's your unfunded liability. There's the bank-breaker. There's the nuclear bomb for the Nordquist dreams, right there.
That rate of climb is unsustainable. Period.
Well, President Obama and Congressional Dems to the rescue, despite fierce opposition (to put it mildly).
By contrast, since the beginning of 2010, Medicare spending has been rising by less than 4 percent a year. On this, both Standard Poor’s Index Committee and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) agree.
So, why?
In the S&P report on healthcare spending released on July 21, he wrote: “many participants [in the healthcare system] have indicated that providers are trying to address health care reform and are looking for ways to control costs. If true, this combination certainly would be a contributory factor to the moderation in cost we have witnessed since early 2010.”
There is some speculation here, to be sure, but read the whole article.
Here's another snippet:
Zeke Emanuel, an oncologist and former special adviser for health policy to White House Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag, is certain that this is what is happening... “This is not mere chance: this is directly related to the initiation of health care reform.” It is not the result of reform, Emmanuel emphasized. The reform measures that will rein in Medicare inflation have not yet been implemented. But, he explained, providers are “anticipating the Affordable Care Act kicking in.” They can’t wait until the end of 2013: “They have to act today...’
“This is doable, since there is so much fat in the system” said Emanuel... It is worth noting that Emanuel is far from cavalier about cutting Medicare benefits that could help patients. A medical ethicist, he has recently been chosen to lead the medical ethics department at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.
Reining in the rising costs of health care is EVERYTHING for people who want to keep an perhaps even expand the social safety net. There is no other way around it. This is the elephant in the room - Al Gore knew it, even George Bush knew it, and surely President Obama knows it. Cutting these expenditures WITHOUT hurting beneficiaries is the most important task before us.
Kudos to the President. Kudos to Harry Reid. Kudos to the Senators who brought these things forward, Democratic and Republican (but more to the Democrats, because the dumbassed tea-party terrified Republicans balked, as usual).
Kudos to Pelosi and Hoyer, who found a way to push this thing through.
Expect these new facts - the slowdown of anticipated medical costs - to help greatly with the upcoming budgetary battles.
I call that a win, unless the Supreme Court undoes it, which is entirely possible.