Krugman - The Trojan Horse

[realFedUp]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/opinion/14KRUG.html



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November 14, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Trojan Horse
By PAUL KRUGMAN

What are we going to do about Medicare? That should be the subject of an open national debate. But right now Congressional leaders are trying to settle the question by stealth, with legislation that purports to be doing something else.

An aging population and rising medical costs will eventually require the nation to provide Medicare with more money or to cut benefits, or both. Meanwhile, there are demands for a new benefit: a gradual shift away from hospital treatment and toward the use of drugs has turned the program's failure to cover prescription drugs into a gaping hole.

snip

This proposal goes under the name of "premium support." Medicare would no longer cover whatever medical costs an individual faced; instead, retirees would receive a lump sum to buy private insurance. (Those who opted to remain with the traditional system would have to pay extra premiums.) The ostensible rationale for this change is the claim that private insurers can provide better, cheaper medical care.

But many studies predict that private insurers would cherry-pick the best (healthiest) prospects, leaving traditional Medicare with retirees who are likely to have high medical costs. These higher costs would then be reflected in the extra payments required to stay in traditional fee-for-service coverage. The effect would be to put health care out of reach for many older Americans. As a 2002 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation judiciously put it, "Difficulties in adjusting for beneficiary health status . . . could make the traditional Medicare FFS program unaffordable to a large portion of beneficiaries."

continued

[gmoney]

1. Privatization sucks!

Single payer is the ONLY way to go.

"Sixteen Years" by the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy

Privatised hospitals
Privatised water
Privatised electric
Privatised gas
Privatised buses
Privatised railways
Privatised garbage
Privatised jails

I hate you (x8)

Privatised pensions
Privatised airports
Privatised dentists
Privatised coal
Privatised ferries
Privatised housing
Privatised telephones
Privatised nuclear power

I hate you (x8)

Privatised businesses have shareholders
who expect to make personal gain
from their stake in essential public services
infested with junior-rat management...
and people wonder where
all the f*cking money's gone.

I hate you (x16)

[many a good man]

2. Republican Healthcare = Welfare for Insurers and Pharmaceuticals

I would like to point out the difference between what Republicans want to do with YOUR money versus how the Democrats want to spend your money.

Republicans steal your money and your grandchildren's money and give it to the corporate crooks and wealthy party donors.

Democrats give the money BACK TO THE PEOPLE. ALL the people. Twenty more years of Republican rule and your grandparents will be living in a cardboard box under the bridge down by the river.

It takes money to make money. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. What is so hard to understand?

It is not your Constitutional right to live without health insurance if you so choose. Because we all have to pay for you in the end. What is it worth to have "the best health care system in the world" if nobody can pay for it?

Oh, sorry. That sounds like class warfare. Forget everything I just said.

[toodles_oduff]

3. Thank God for Medicare!

My mother died last year after a long battle with cancer. Thank god for Medicare (although she did also have a supplement plan with Blue Cross). Maybe they want the elderly to NOT get access to health care. Then all those old folks would die sooner and the repugs could say, "Hey there's not that many of them around anymore. What do we need Social Security for?" This may not affect the current elderly generation but we baby-boomers need to wake up and smell the coffee as this scheme, if successful, could affect us!

As an aside, this whole issue of the health insurers' cherry-picking only the healthy really makes me mad. Shoot, almost all of us have some health issue (probably even the health insurance companies' employees) and if they get into genetics and family histories of certain illnesses, forget it! And even a "perfect" specimen of health can still wind up a medical disaster as the result of, say, a bad car crash or the like.