Posts tagged 'Healthcare Reform'
September will be the most difficult month regarding healthcare reform for the Obama administration and the advocates of comprehensive health reform. They knew that it would be a tough month but knowing it and going through it is two different things. This administration and advocates are going through it. 
Lawmakers are returning from a break and the President is returning from his vacation. Healthcare reform is not an easy task and has been a tough fight.
On top of everything else, Ted Kennedy – the Lion of the Senate – has now passed away.
Senator Kennedy had served for over 45 years and was a guiding light for lawmakers that were on both sides of the aisle. He was able to explain his point of view tactfully and respectfully so that even those who didn’t agree would still at least listen – and some of them actually heard him and adjusted their thinking on whatever subject was at hand. Of course, there were those times when he could be quite forceful and absolutely nobody missed the point.
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Now that lawmakers and the President are getting back to action, we will see what happens with these bills. One of the important issues when it comes to health insurance reform is the changes to Medicare.
We have been told that seniors and individuals with disabilities will not lose their benefits; however, there is a lot of spirited debate debating regarding their Medicare coverage.
One approach would be decrease the cost of reform as well as lessening its scope and spend around $600 billion to around $800 billion during the next ten years instead of over $1 trillion which has been proposed as a possibility. Doing this would make it easier on the finances of the federal government, but would be more difficult to actually put into place than doing a comprehensive overhaul of the whole system. Using the lesser figures would actually create a kind of hodge podge of a fix and would not fix two essential issues with the system we have now. There are two many people without health insurance and too many others are getting to the point where, not only can they not afford it, but it is not taking care of their needs at the prices they are paying now.
If there becomes a situation where reform cuts out subsidizing employers regarding health insurance, many people could not afford it anymore. They would be obligated to purchase insurance on their own. If they did not, there is a possibility that they would be fined.
Coverage could be offered to various groups depending on the situation, and hopefully, in time, other groups could be added. The hard part would be who would get this coverage. It is obvious that Medicaid is essential to individuals at or close to the poverty level. Having that program stay solid and be offered to all at that level would be an expensive proposition – around $40 billion in the next ten years. Yet going without it would cause extra problems – people at the poverty level who could not receive Medicaid could end up at the ER for things that could have cost the government hundred or thousands of dollars less had they been covered by Medicaid and allowed to simply see a doctor or a clinic. Essentially, if people in this position are not covered by Medicaid, they still get sick and the bills for those ER visits and other medical services for those who are not covered by Medicaid are partially absorbed by the hospitals as a loss and, you guessed it, paid by the government, thus affecting our taxes.
Medicare is another program that is essential to save. As Boomers are becoming retirement age they will be ready to enroll in hordes, so they will need to be able to have this coverage. Most Boomers are a little more prepared for retirement than the last generation, so there may be a little breathing room as they transition, however, Medicare must be fixed and saved, and the President has promised not to cut this program, rather to save it and make it work.
The challenge now is for congress to find a way to make sure the uninsured are insured, find the money to pay for comprehensive healthcare reform and save these two programs – Medicare and Medicaid – while working to make all this affordable while moving into the future.
For now, we are all waiting to see what congress comes up with.
This is a question that keeps going back and forth between all of the individuals who are working hard to come to a solution to the healthcare and Medicare woes. Each side of the issue feels strongly about their position.
One side says that Medicare needs to be done away with or completely changed. They feel it has too many flaws and issues, as well as financial deficits, so that we might as wel start from the beginning and build something new.
The other side feels that the foundation of Medicare is perfectly fine and started out differently than it is being used now. Still, the foundation could still be used now with a few changes to make it work better.
From a lot of articles I have read, though there are flaws in Medicare and the need to be adjusted, as most or at least half of the the individuals involved in the debate agree, the foundation is solid, and after all, it has worked for several decades.
Part of the issue, of course, is that the beginning, there were a lot fewer Medicare recipients at that time. In addition, the costs of medical care were far lower than they are today. So lawmakers have been working on both ends of the issues - trying to get healthcare costs under control while at the same time, trying to make sure that Medicare recipients get their needs met to the extent possible.
This can be a model for healthcare reform from the standpoint because if the foundation for Medicare is used to build upon to reform healthcare, it could eliminate some or most of the flaws as well as making medical care available for all.
Time will tell how all the situation works out for both Medicare and Helthcare reform. Hopefully the reforms will result in at least basic medical care for all, which is something that is sorely needed in this country.
The current administration is trying to create big changes in Medicare as they try to overhaul and reform the healthcare system. This could mean something quite new for seniors and may be a template for reforming healthcare in this country in general.
The idea is to create less waste in the entire healthcare system and strengthen Medicare, as well as covering the uninsured.
Medicare covers about 45 million Americans who are elderly or disabled, and its policies are followed by many private insurance companies when they set up their internal systems. The new approach and ideas for seniors would helMedicare p medical professionals stress and help patients with follow-up care by their family doctors and nurses so that more chronically ill patients could avoid being hospitalized and re-hospitalized when chronic problems such as high blood pressure get out of control.
There would be changes for doctors and hospitals, too. Primary care doctors who care for patients on a more constant basis would be paid more, while specialists would be watched more closely, especially as they order more tests and procedures. Hospitals could have to pay penalties if they did not provide adequate follow-up care, therefore having the same patients continually being readmitted for the same problem.
Medicaid would also see similar changes, which would affect most of the 50 million low income people that they cover.
“Medicare is going to be the driver to achieve quality reforms, in large part because the other players tend to follow Medicare,” said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the Finance Committee chairman. Baucus aims to have a bill on the Senate floor this summer that would restrain costs and cover the estimated 50 million uninsured.
The committee meetings that are slated will iron the details out, and some of the meetings have already started. This effort is aimed at helping even out who pays for these benefits and how. The sickest 10% of the patients account for nearly 2/3 the cost that Medicare spends per year. These are frail individuals who usually have more than one serious chronic condition such as high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. The cost is so high because they are seeing several specialists for each issue. If the changes that are being examined can be put into place, they could be seeing one doctor who could control and coordinate the other treatment they receive, eliminating duplicate procedures and eliminating waste.
If and when lawmakers are able to straighten the health care fragmentation out, it is very possible that everyone could get good care and save money at the same time.
The current administration inherited a lot of problems, not the least of which is the healthcare issue – both Medicare/Medicaid and private health care plans. Trying to balance all these out is difficult at best and, though people are looking at the “first 100 days”, 3 months is not actually a lot of time to deal with these issues on top of the other national and international issues this country faces, not to mention that even Superman and all his super-hero friends could not come up with a plan to solve all these problems in 3 months – period.
However, Obama and lawmakers are trying to iron things out. Healthcare is extremely critical because of the number of families without it and the number of seniors who depend upon it.
There have been many ideas explored to try to solve the problems inherent in the system at this point, but no solutions yet. One of the ideas on the table is something called entitlement reform, which means that Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid would be rationed (no examples given yet) and supposedly save the system, the government and the taxpayers trillions of dollars, partially by eliminating or rationing services – including education and prevention programs to keep people from getting worse and having to use the system in the first place.
Proponents of this entitlement reform in the form of rationing, feel that this would then balance the budget because of the trillions of dollars saved. They blame President Obama for not offering this type of reform, but instead trying to initiate universal health options so that everyone in this country would be able to have at least some sort of health care – even if it was very basic.
They seem to forget that Obama did not create the problem; he inherited it and is simply trying to fix it somehow with the help of Congress. Lawmakers are working on adjustments to try to make all of this work, however this will take time. As promised, the president and lawmakers hit the ground running minutes after inauguration. Is it possible that the pundits who say that the only answer to the healthcare issues is rationing can just give the actual lawmakers enough time to work on this mess – that has taken decades, especially the last 8 years – to get to this point? It’s like gaining 50 pounds in 5 years and expecting to lose it in 3 weeks. It is impossible for that to happen. It took time to get to that point. It will take some time to get fixed.
A quote from Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, a proponent of rationing sums it up this way:
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“It is estimated that a third to a half of one’s lifetime health costs are consumed in the last six months of life. Accordingly, Britain’s National Health Service can deny treatments it deems not cost-effective —- and if you’re old and infirm, the cost-effectiveness of treating you plummets. In Canada, they ration by queuing. You can wait forever for so-called elective procedures like hip replacements.
Rationing is not as alien to America as we think. We already ration kidneys and hearts for transplant according to survivability criteria as well as by queuing. A nationalized health insurance system would ration everything from MRIs to intensive care by a myriad of similar criteria.
Social Security was the third rail of American politics. Not anymore. Health care rationing has ascended —- which is why Obama, the consummate politician, knows to offer the candy (universality) today before serving the spinach (rationing) tomorrow. It will work for a while, but there is no escaping rationing. In the end, the spinach must be served.”
Charles Krauthammer may be right in the end, however, exploring other avenues that could possible help more people in a broader way and bring in premiums to offset costs might not be a horrible answer, either.
We will all have to see what happens as things get hammered out, and when they do, if Charles is right, I’ll be eating my spinach right along with everybody else.
