I am not well versed in the inner workings of Medicare. I do know that the plan, like all things related to health care and health insurance, needs some tweaking. We face an aging population and swelling health care needs. There is always room for improvement. What strikes me most about the terminology we use is the irony; there is very little focus on “care” when it comes to all things health related. Patients become numbers, statistics, and actuarial data. Doctors and insurance companies see dollars. More energy is spent caring about money than caring about people. And now we’ve come to a point in our country where our choices can impact the most vulnerable among us, the elderly. I encourage you to read what the Brookings Institute has to say on the issue of Medicare reform.
I am not here as an insurance expert, but as I write about the topic of Medicare from a lay perspective, I cannot help but cringe at the thought of a voucher system. Something about this system seems sketchy to me. We continue to implement consumer compromises in an effort to reduce costs, but have yet to hold insurance companies accountable. Unfortunately, there are no lobbyists for regular people, and we don’t have the muscle to throw our weight around Congress.
The voucher system sounds good on paper alone. It does not take into account realistic increases in health care costs that seniors would have to pay out of pocket. The plan on paper would have you think seniors would actually make money by pocketing the difference between coverage and actual costs. The truth is, coverage would be eroded over time as health care costs and premiums rise.
There are no guarantees.
Vouchers are supposed to fuel competition. There is still no solid evidence on how that plays out. The crux of the challenge continues to be the insurance companies. How can we ensure they are regulated and not participating in deceptive practices? The fleecing of the elderly is rampant in all things financial. I spent almost 10 years working in the financial services industry and worked a great deal with the elderly population. Policies, tax codes, investments, and such are confusing to the most knowledgeable among us. The complexity is simply mind-numbing and exponentially so for many seniors.
This is how I see it from a purely human perspective ... We are talking about one of our country’s most vulnerable populations here. There are stories in the news everyday about people who try to swindle the elderly. Why would our own government be a part of that treachery? We are talking about 50 million Americans here. Not numbers, not statistics. People. The question to ask is this: Do our leaders care more about the financial deficit or the moral deficit our country faces? We must take care of our people.
This post is part of a weekly conversation with our Moms Matter 2012 political bloggers. To see the original question and what the other writers have to say, see Should Medicare Be Replaced by Subsidies?
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Comments 47
"I am not well versed in the inner workings of Medicare"
"I am not here as an insurance expert,"
Yet that did not stop you from dutifully bleating the standard left wing agitprop as you have been programmed:
"Ryan's Medicare Proposal Is Another Scam to Swindle the Elderly"
On one level, it's actually funny.
On another level, it's rather disgusting.
On yet another, it's scarey, (and infuriating) as there are many who... er... (for lack of a better term) "think" this way.
So much material, so little time...
Though it is so tempting to take this article apart piece by piece, (very fertile ground for such an activity, given the rich manure it contains) it seems many others have done a very nice job slicing and dicing it from a reality based numbers perspective.
So, I am going to address the underlying sickness, of which this article is merely a symptom:
"This is how I see it from a purely human perspective ... "..."Not numbers, not statistics. People. The question to ask is this: Do our leaders care more about the financial deficit or the moral deficit our country faces?"
It is very easy to idealize and place ones mind in the clouds and dream about how wonderful things would be if simply this, that, or the other "magic" thing happens. Gee, wouldn't it be wonderful if people simply never got sick in the first place? Wouldn't it be wonderful if no one aged, and we all lived young and healthy forever? Wouldn't it be great if space aliens landed and gave us giant mountains of money and gold so no one would ever have to work for a living, never went hungry and had every material thing they ever dreamed of forever? (Why don't you stop and try that "think" thing for a moment, and see if you can figure out why that wouldn't work?) (Hint: It's not the lack of space aliens...)
(Another topic, but once you have figured that one out, try thinking about our current monetary policy in light of that principal...)
Like it or not, if you want hospitals, you have to pay construction workers. You will also have to pay someone to wash the sheets and mow the grass around it. If you want medicines, you have to pay the workers who produce them, and yes, the scientists who develop them. If you want medical supplies, you have to pay someone to manufacture them. Plastic syringes require oil wells. Ambulances need tires. The power plants that power the lights need fuel. The cafeteria needs farmers. The phones need the phone company. In the process of all this, you will also have to pay for all of the supporting financial industries, including those "evil" financial institutions who makes loans and "evil" insurance companies who manage the fees and payments for all these services.
Yes, it is very easy and comforting to adopt the notion that because you "care" that this somehow makes you "enlightened". But, the reality is there is no claim to "enlightenment" if you don't "get it" that someone, somehow, has to PAY for all that!!!
You want the entire Medicare problem boiled down into something simple enough for a not well versed, non-expert, lay person? The promises made are much much bigger than the amount of money set aside to pay for those promises. And guess what, it is on such a large scale that "just raising taxes on someone else, some "evil rich guy" is not going to get enough money to pay for all those idealistic dreams.
Imagine you promised your child's entire school that if they came to your house, you would give them all ice cream. They arrive, and you discover the on quart of ice cream in your freezer is not going to be enough. You go to each neighbor on your street, put a gun to their head and force them to give you all of the ice cream they have. Still not enough... See the problem? Sometimes it is easier to make promises than to keep them.
Sorry, sometimes reality can be a cold, hard place that is quite lacking in unicorns and jelly beans.
"Not numbers, not statistics. People."
This problem is not one of people, but is one of numbers and economics, whether you understand them or not.
To touch on a couple of the more glaring errors:
"but have yet to hold insurance companies accountable."... "The crux of the challenge continues to be the insurance companies. How can we ensure they are regulated and not participating in deceptive practices?
While to someone who is totally ignorant and speaking out of their posterior, it might be easy to rant about the evils of "bu..., bu..., bu..., BIG BUSINESS! (foam, slobber)", your claims are simply not so. This is a very, very highly regulated industry. Furthermore, the profit margins are closely monitored, and are not out of line with any other major business. And guess what? All of that regulation requires it's own set of resources, labor, supplies, time, and money, and INCREASED COSTS! Now, an INTELLIGENT analysis of this would be to consider achieving the most effective efficient level of regulation that balances costs vs. the benefits of consumer protection achieved. However, we have spent so much time dealing with the banal idiocy of the erroneous "touchy feely" platitudes, that we simply do not have time at this point.
Did it ever occur to you that that might be the reason for producing the ignorant "appeal to emotion" agi-prop in the first place? Oh oh, more of that "thinking" stuff...
"The voucher system sounds good on paper alone. It does not take into account realistic increases in health care costs that seniors would have to pay out of pocket."
You have that precisely backwards. The entire point of a voucher system IS to take into account REALISTIC increases in health care costs. You have a scarce resource (money) how do you most effectively, efficiently, and fairly allocate it?
OK, so reality sucks, the world is going to end, and like it or not, some day we are all going to die. What to do about it?
Once again, costs.
"...competition. There is still no solid evidence on how that plays out."
Um, actually that is the foundation of the free market, is the foundation of all economic principals, and has been well proven from pre-history to today.
Those "Big Businesses" that you like to rail against got to be that way because they are efficient. Even if you possessed the knowledge and skills to do so, it would take your entire life or longer for you to build your own car. Yet you can purchase one for the price of what your own labor can produce in a relatively short time. Hint: Try reading up on "economy of scale".
Costs. Let's get away from demonizing the producers for a moment, and take a quick look at the parasites. I made one brief mention of the REGULATORY BURDEN, as pertaining to insurance regulation. An enormous percentage of health care costs are related to a very very large number of all manner of regulatory costs throughout the medical industry. Once again, an intelligent analysis would be their costs vs. benefits. (and I have spent way too much time on this already.)
Finally, the most shocking omission from this article is any mention what so ever of MALPRACTICE insurance costs and LEGAL costs. Most doctors pay more than you gross per year for malpractice insurance. Why? Guess what, this money does NOT go to pay for health care, it goes to pay for lawyers.
Guess who is one of the biggest "Fat Cat Big (evil, of course) Money Special Interest" political donors out there? Trial Lawyers. Guess who get's the overwhelming majority of this money? Hint: It's not Ryan's party...
It just might be given to the party that is telling you not to learn about the topic and think for yourself, but to just imagine all those unicorns and jelly beans, stick your head in the sand, and believe we can make the world a utopia by simply taxing "some other guy" more, and feel good about all that because you are an "enlightened liberal" and you "care" about people, even if you don't really understand what is going on.
End Rant.
Hey Iliana, you know what's ironic? Obama's "AFFORDABLE CARE ACT". It's not affordable OR focused on improving care.
How about writing about subjects that you do know something about?
It's more focused on care than any plan I've seen from conservatives. In fact, I'm pretty sure conservatives do not even really know what the word care means.
rightside - $7,000,000,000,000 he swiped from Medicare, is swiped by Romney and Ryan too.
Yes, but R/R protect the Medicare plan, whereas BO has NO PLAN in place to pull Medicare out of the flames. Under Obama, Medicare is belly-up in a decade or so.
And under Ryan low income America is even more belly up than they alreay are. I just can't believe that anyone would think pirvatizing Medicare is a good thing! Our health should not be for profit! Neither Obama nor his health care law literally "cut" a dollar from the Medicare program’s budget. Rather, the health care law instituted a number of changes to reduce the growth of Medicare costs. At the time the law was passed, those reductions amounted to $500 billion over the next 10 years. Ryan's plan includes these same cuts. Ryan himself said his plan did include the reductions in future spending that were part of the federal health care law.
It also should be pointed out that the Ryan budget is a congressional resolution that doesn’t have the force of law. And its plan for Medicare hasn’t been turned into legislation that could be analyzed in detail by the Congressional Budget Office.
There are no plans to privatize Medicare. None.
Working for profit creates a drive to offer the best possible service, so people seek you out. If you desire mediocre medical care, from people who have no reason to offer exceptional service, you can move to Canada or any one the failing socialist countries across the pond. On you way over, perhaps you'll share a plane with people from those countries, who came to America for our superior health care and are returning home healthier than when they left.