Fix Health Care Policy

The President’s Planned Changes to Medicare: Costly for Seniors

What is President Obama’s plan for Medicare—Obamacare’s changes and beyond?

Heritage has a new Issue Brief, “Obama’s Medicare Plan: Seniors Will Pay More,” that details the future increases in out-of-pocket costs for seniors under current law and President Obama’s 2013 budget proposal.

Over the next five years, under current law, seniors in traditional Medicare are projected to face higher Part B and D premiums, along with other out-of-pocket cost increases. Instead of structurally reforming Medicare, President Obama’s 2013 budget proposal would raise premiums even further for upper-income enrollees in Parts B and D, while also imposing additional deductibles and co-payments (in certain cases) on newly joining baby boomers beginning in 2017.

“Obama’s latest budgetary scheme for cost-shifting to seniors is just another indication that the Administration and its allies on Capitol Hill are running out of options,” the authors write.

Read the full report here.

Tags: Medicare, out-of-pocket costs, pay more, plan, premiums, President Obama, Seniors, traditional program

Medicare Roundup 10/19: Setting the Record Straight

In recent weeks, liberal politicians, editorialists, and policy analysts have vigorously attacked reform of Medicare based on a defined contribution financing. In fact, this approach to reforming Medicare has a long bipartisan tradition going back to the 1980s and Representatives Richard Gephardt (D–MO) and David Stockman (R–MI). In fact, much of this criticism is distorted, misleading, or just plain wrong.

Here are some articles that set the record straight:

Kaiser Study on Medicare Assumes Seniors Don’t Like Lower Prices (Drew Gonshorowski)

The Heritage Foundation, 10/16/12

“The Kaiser study assumes that an entire class of Americans—senior citizens—is insensitive to price. In reality, seniors are price sensitive when they are presented with options. Already, 90 percent of retirees can and do choose the private health plans they like, ranging from supplemental insurance to Medicare Advantage and Medicare drug plans.”

Presidential Debate Prep: Understanding Obamacare’s $716 Billion in Cuts to Medicare (Bob Moffit and Alyene Senger)

The Heritage Foundation, 10/16/12

“As the Medicare debate intensifies, there still seems to be popular confusion regarding the $716 billion in ‘savings’ from Obamacare’s Medicare payment cuts. Let us end the confusion.”

The Problem with Kaiser’s Premium Support Study? Seniors Are Smarter Than That—and So Are Health Plans (Joe Antos)

AmericanEnterpriseInstitute, 10/15/12

“The Kaiser report emphasizes a worst-case scenario. To reach their conclusion, the authors assume that no beneficiary would change health plans even if a less expensive option would save them hundreds of dollars a month.”

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: Medicare, myths, ObamaCare, premium support, repeal the law, Seniors

FACT CHECK: Obama Misleads on Medicare, Taxes, and Regulations

During a Sunday evening interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” President Obama made numerous factually inaccurate or misleading claims.

Specifically, Obama claimed that he has not raised Americans’ taxes, that he has not raised costs for Medicare beneficiaries, and that he has imposed fewer regulations than his predecessor. The first two claims are false, and the third is highly misleading.

Obama: “You can’t ask me to…ask seniors to pay more for their Medicare.”

Fact: Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare will raise Medicare costs for many seniors.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: "60 Minutes", beneficiaries, CBS, facts, Medicare, myths, ObamaCare, President Obama, Seniors, taxes

Debunking Medicare Reform Myths

In a recent paper, Heritage expert Bob Moffit responds to the critics of the premium-support model for Medicare. This type of reform would give seniors a defined government contribution toward the cost of a Medicare plan of their choice. All plans would compete against each other to deliver market-based prices and higher quality care for seniors.

Here’s a summary of the most common arguments against premium support and why they don’t hold up against facts:

• “Premium support would destroy traditional Medicare.” Under all of the major premium-support proposals, traditional Medicare is still an option for seniors. Seniors would be given a choice between the fee-for-service Medicare of today or private plans. Medicare would be forced to compete with private plans that have the potential to offer greater benefits at a lower cost.
• “Premium support would ‘privatize’ Medicare.” Medicare is highly privatized already. Moffit points out that almost all of Medicare is comprised of private agents or institutions that are financed by the public and have to follow public rules. In addition, Medicare Advantage (MA), which currently enrolls 27 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries, is comprised of private health plans that compete against each other, and the Medicare prescription drug benefit is provided through private plans as well.
• “Premium support would leave Medicare patients at the mercy of rapacious insurance companies.” Moffit writes that “every major premium-support proposal would retain or reinforce insurance rules that prevent ‘cherry picking’ or coverage denials based on health status.”

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: defined-contribution system, high quality plan, Medicare myths, premium support, Seniors, status quo, traditional Medicare

Obamacare’s Second Anniversary: No Gift for Seniors

This week will mark Obamacare’s second birthday, but there’s little reason to celebrate.

Throughout the week, Obamacare advocates will be emphasizing the law’s supposed benefits on specific groups of Americans, but as Heritage’s research over the past two years has shown, Obamacare harms Americans—even the groups showcased by the left.

Today, the focus is on the impact to America’s seniors. Obamacare supporters claim that the health law protects and strengthens Medicare, but this couldn’t be further from reality. Instead, the law actually uses savings in Medicare to fund other new government spending while threatening seniors’ access to care and ending Medicare as we know it.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: harming Americans, Obamacare's second anniversary, Seniors

The Secret Plan to Defend Obamacare

This week, The Heritage Foundation’s Rob Bluey obtained a four-page strategy memo that outlines a White House-coordinated campaign to force an unwilling public to accept Obamacare. Once again, all the strategies by the Administration and its liberal allies involve how better to message this hated law as the anniversary of its passage approaches and the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on its constitutionality. If only the Administration put this much effort into lowering the price of gas or creating jobs.

The memo identifies the White House’s target audience — seniors, women, and young adults — with a goal of “increas[ing] overall public support for the law by making the benefits of the law (and consequences of taking those benefits away) tangible by featuring stories of real people impacted.” The effort will focus on two key issues:

“Remind people that the law is already benefiting millions of Americans by providing health care coverage, reducing costs and providing access to healthcare coverage. This message will include the ideas that these are benefits that politicans/the Court art (sic) are trying to take away from average Americans.”

“Frame the Supreme Court oral arguments in terms of real people and real benefits that would be lost if the law were overturned. While lawyers will be talking about the individual responsibility piece of the law and the legal precedence, organizations on the ground should continue to focus on these more tangible results of the law.”

The White House and its allies have a lot of persuading to do. The American people have come to their own conclusion about Obamacare — the law was a serious mistake, and it’s time for it to go.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: liberal advocacy organizations, ObamaCare, Seniors, strategy memo, women, young adults

Medicare Rationing and Obama’s Unelected Board of Bureaucrats

Earlier this week, the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee moved legislation forward that would repeal one of the most intrusive and unpopular parts of Obamacare: the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). A board of unelected government officials tasked with finding and implementing ways to control Medicare spending from the top-down, IPAB opens the door to rationing of care, both direct and indirect, without congressional approval.

The bill to repeal this onerous part of the health law has 226 co-sponsors, 17 of whom are Democrats. Meanwhile, support for better ways to control Medicare’s cost using a premium support model continues to surface on both sides of the aisle. Premium support would allow seniors to use a defined government contribution to purchase the private plan that suits them best in a competitive marketplace. Patient empowerment and choice would drive better value for dollars spent, bringing down costs without jeopardizing quality or patient autonomy through government rationing.  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: IPAB, Medicare, ObamaCare, rationing, Seniors, top-down decisions

The Impact of Obamacare Video Series

During his 2012 State of the Union address, President Obama barely discussed his health care law. But that doesn’t mean Americans must remain in the dark about how the unpopular health law will impact each and every one of them. Heritage has compiled a series of videos that highlight how individuals and families will be affected by the new law.

Business Owners

Obamacare’s new taxes and mandates on business are a hindrance to economic growth and job creation. The law requires that employers provide health insurance to their employees or face a fine. As the cost of health insurance continues to increase under Obamacare, employers will face increasingly steep costs to keep employees insured and avoid the penalties. According to research by McKinsey and Company, close to one-third of employers says they will definitely or probably stop covering employees once Obamacare is fully implemented; this increased to 50 percent after the law had been explained to employers in greater detail.  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: businesses, families, individuals, mandates, ObamaCare, Seniors, State of the Union address, taxes, videos

VIDEO: Seniors & Providers Dread Obamacare Changes

 

Medicare patient Ann Lorenz has relied on the advice and recommendations of her neurologist, Dr. Jeffrey English, since she was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease 13 years ago. So the dramatic changes coming to Medicare via the Affordable Care Act—and its potential to limit seniors’ access to care as doctors foresee dropping Medicare patients—already worry Lorenz.

“One of the first things you ask a new doctor is if they accept Medicare,” Lorenz, who lives in Atlanta, says in a new Impact of Obamacare video. “And we have always seemed to have doctors that accepted it, which has worked out very nicely because I have had to go over the last few years…to many doctors…because of age and the various things that happen to you when you get older.”  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: cuts, Impact of Obamacare video series, Medicare, neurologist, Seniors

Junk the Medicare Physician Payment Formula

In January 2012, Medicare physicians face a 27.4 percent cut in their payment for treating senior and disabled citizens.

Congress, as it has routinely since 2003, is feverishly preparing legislation to stop its own goofy Medicare payment formula from going into effect. If they don’t succeed this year, seniors can be assured of severe problems accessing physician care.

The reason Congress goes through this silly routine almost every year is that it is unable or unwilling to make serious changes in the Medicare program. Today, Medicare payment for doctors is determined by a complex fee system, the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS), in which payment is tied to a social-science measurement of doctors’ estimated time, energy, and resources in providing a medical service.

While the Reagan Administration (naturally) opposed RBRVS, its advocates sold it (incredibly) to the Bush Administration and Congress in 1989 as a “scientific” way to pay doctors. So the government sets the fees for over 7,000 medical services, and that payment is further restricted by price controls. Since 1989, doctors cannot legally charge Medicare patients more than government officials say.  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: doc fix, Medicare, physician formula payment, Seniors