CHART: Medicare Spending From 1980 Thru 2018
Everyone can agree that something must be done.
A good place to start would be revisiting Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit. As a result of this legislation, Medicare is unable to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. David Walker called it the single most fiscally irresponsible bill in the last 50 years of Congress. And Walker is not prone to hyperbole.. You can thank Billy Tauzin for that particular gift to bankrupt future generations.
Means test Social Security and Medicare - only the wealthy will pay more, cut defense 50% over the next 10 years, fix Medicare part D - the prescription drug benefit - so that we can actually negotiate prices with Big Pharma, lower the corporate tax rate to 25% and eliminate ALL loopholes, deductions and sweetheart deals, flatten the personal income tax structure and eliminate deductions and loopholes, and then if need be, we can talk about further cuts.
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Medicare for a New Century
Liberals seem delighted that Paul Ryan and the GOP have decided to charge the fixed bayonets of Medicare reform, denouncing the new House budget as a crime against seniors, humanity, and so on. Republicans are taking a huge political risk, but they are now setting the reform agenda, and their honesty may even oblige a national debate about the future of an entitlement state that can't survive in its current form.
Mr. Ryan's core insight is that Medicare needs to be modernized if it is to survive. The federal insurance program for the elderly has barely changed since 1965, several health-care revolutions and trillions of misspent tax dollars ago. The GOP plan—known as premium support—would rationalize Medicare's burden on taxpayers, while introducing market competition to control costs.
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As Democrats build their re-election bids around Mediscare demagoguery, they're pretending that the choice is between "privatization" and a free lunch. Mr. Ryan has done a service in exposing this illusion. Nothing will sooner finish off "Medicare as we know it" than to continue its present march into insolvency. His is the first credible plan endorsed by either party forpreserving the safety net.
Apr 19, 2011 at 11:38 AM
Reader Comments (6)
Gambling with the planet
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/201146115727852843.html
[snip]
Before the Great Recession, America’s economic gurus - from the head of the Federal Reserve to the titans of finance - boasted that we had learned to master risk. "Innovative" financial instruments such as derivatives and credit-default swaps enabled the distribution of risk throughout the economy. We now know that they deluded not only the rest of society, but even themselves.
These wizards of finance, it turned out, didn’t understand the intricacies of risk, let alone the dangers posed by "fat-tail distributions"- a statistical term for rare events with huge consequences, sometimes called "black swans". Events that were supposed to happen once in a century - or even once in the lifetime of the universe - seemed to happen every ten years. Worse, not only was the frequency of these events vastly underestimated; so was the astronomical damage they would cause - something like the meltdowns that keep dogging the nuclear industry.
That will necessitate a 20% increase in Medicare costs because we will have to then fund exorbitant CEO salaries and bonuses and stock options and broker commissions and shareholder profits and even campaign contributions which will be passed on to the patient. Nice try, Paul.
And oh, the private insurers already have 20% of the Medicare market (Medicare Advantage), but they want 100% so they can have unfettered control over premiums. So if Ryan gets his way we go on welfare instead? Smart.
Why do I trust Medicare? Because (a) I've been on Medicare for seven years and have had zero problems, (b) I was a Medicare provider for 20 years and had zero problems, (c) Medicare has nearly a half century of experience and has never canceled or declined a qualified patient, (d) is 95% run by private hospitals, clinics and doctors, and (e) will provide first-class CheneyCare to 100% of Americans and save $400 billion in wasted administrative costs.
Oh gee, I didn't know that, Ryan says.
Jack Lohman
http://MoneyedPoliticians.net
White House Confirms: Deal With Big Pharma Bars Price Negotiations
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/07/white-house-confirms-deal_n_254408.html
The White House deal with Big Pharma undermines democracy
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2009/08/10/pharma
If we default here's what happens
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/dean-baker-lets-just-default
It introduces "premium support" saying it would "rationalize Medicare's burden on taxpayers." Unfortunately, I still don't know what the author meant by that as he vaguely linked it to "competition to control costs."
This "competition" will happen even though government will pay about the same as now, subsidizing via a "defined contribution" of about $15k each. This must be where the "premium support" kicks in because all future costs over that amount will be the recipient's problem. This is supposed to make Medicare beneficiaries demand - and receive - more competitively priced care.
In fact, the author says "deliberate suppression of the price mechanism" has "helped to turbocharge US health costs." He even drags out the old chestnut about "price controls." I get that government subsidies increase demand, which increases price, and that all others have to meet that artificially inflated price if they want to compete for the same goods. It seems to me that the "turbocharge" comes from the supply side of providers, and using patients to apply the brake is cruel.
Is it just me or does the entire plan revolve around turbocharging retirees to take on the 7.2% annual price increases by demanding lower prices? Hello, have not all reforms been spurred by the almost universal desire for lower healthcare costs? How are old people supposed to accomplish what no one else has? Lower my premiums or I'll beat you with my cane?
I actually didn't understand the article. The only part I got is that anyone who opposes the GOP plan is a fool, and apparently too dumb to understand.
Sigh.