Medicare Death Watch - Democratic Underground

McCamy Taylor

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Fri Oct-21-11 07:25 PM
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Medicare Death Watch

A reminder to those who may have missed my previous journals about the topic. In January, 2012, Medicare will slash provider payments by 29%. This has nothing to do with the deficit reduction committee. These cuts were planned years ago as part of the so called Sustainable Growth Rate (or SGR for short). Over half of Texas physicians surveyed have said they will consider dropping Medicare if the cuts go through. Those that do not want to turn away their existing elderly patients will almost certainly stop taking new Medicare patients. Why? Because the typical primary care physician overhead is 70%----meaning that an across the board cut of 29% could drive a practice out of business, if a large proportion of the patients are on Medicare.

In order to save Medicare from the glue factory, both Houses of Congress must vote to eliminate (or at least kick down the road once again) these scheduled pay cuts. But just last April, House Republicans voted almost unanimously to abolish Medicare for those 55 and under, indicating that Republicans are committed to destroying Medicare----even though they now claim they didn’t really mean it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/24/paul-ryan-medicare-propos_n_866530.html

Most of us have gotten used to seeing these scheduled cuts delayed. But, this is the first year we have had a House determined to kill Medicare. And there is no guarantee that Senate Republicans will not attempt a filibuster of legislation designed to save Medicare. The fact that Reid has not brought this highly charged issue up for a vote suggests that he is not sure he can get 60 votes, and he does not want to get labeled as the Democrat who presided over the Senate when it “killed” Medicare.

Democratic Representative Allyson Scwartz has crafted a petition, signed by 113 members of Congress (21 of them Republicans) demanding that Medicare be saved.

http://aboveavgjane.blogspot.com/2011/10/schwartz-signs-letter-on-medicare.html

The 21 GOP signatures is significant. All but four House Republicans voted to end Medicare last spring. The political backlash hit their party hard, so, at least some of them may be rethinking the attack on America’s favorite insurance plan. On the other hand, private insurers are determined to see the program killed, since it could easily serve as a template for universal national health insurance, while the death of Medicare will almost certainly doom any future efforts to create a single payer plan. And thanks to the SCOTUS, private insurance companies now spend an unlimited amount of money bribing politicians.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Committee has also proposed that Congress do away with the scheduled fee cuts. They recommend a smaller (5%) reduction in specialist fees and no change to primary care fees. While the AMA does not like this one, either, MedPAC’s plan would not destroy Medicare.

President Obama continues to call for the repeal of the scheduled Medicare cuts---although you are unlikely to hear the press talk about it. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of this Obama Wants to Chainsaw Massacre Medicare article, you will read:

The American Medical Association quickly identified at least one thing it liked about the administration's deficit-reduction plan: Obama's numbers assume passage of a "doc fix" to the Medicare reimbursement crisis created by the program's sustainable growth rate formula for setting physician pay. That formula will trigger a 29.5% reduction in Medicare rates on January 1 unless Congress acts to avert it.

Current federal budget projections assume this massive reduction will occur. Repealing the sustainable growth rate and freezing Medicare rates for 10 years would cost $300 billion, which is an amount that must be factored into deficit-reduction math, the Obama administration said. "Failure to do so simply masks the worsening long-run deficit."

In a press release today, American Medical Association President Peter Carmel, MD, commended the president for recognizing that deficit reduction must take sustainable growth rate repeal into account.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/749949

Even the Heritage Foundation wants the SGR repealed.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/10/The-First-Stage-of-Medicare-Reform-Fixing-the-Current-Program

So, who wants to see Medicare die next year? The Cato Institute aka the Kochs, who complained in late 2010 about Congress’s reluctance to let the SGR cuts take effect in years past.

Senate Democrats and Republicans agreed on — and passed by a vote of 99-0 — a one-year extension of the so-called "doctor fix" for Medicare. The result is almost certainly going to mean higher deficits and more debt piled on the backs of our children.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12629

So, where is the press on this highly charged issue? Good question. A recent AMA poll found that when people heard about the scheduled fees cuts, almost all of them were extremely alarmed. And an alarmed public is an angry, vocal public. Medicare is much more likely to die from the death of a 1000 cuts if the public does not know what is happening. So, if you are one of the private health insurers who wants to kill Medicare, your best bet is not to talk about the issue and hope that the press remains too distracted. Then, after the cuts take effect, you can get your trained puppets in the press to blame it all on the Democrats.

If you are a concerned American who wants to see our nation's elderly continue to receive the health care they deserve, I suggest that you let Congress and your local paper know about your concerns now. Because once the cuts take effect, the public will never regain its confidence in a single payer, government sponsored health insurance program again.