Catfood Commission's plan for fucking over Medicare and Medicaid recipients.

[eridani]

http://topnews360.tmcnet.com/topics/associated-press/articles/2010/11/20/119377-deficit-commission-debates-overhaul-medicare.htm

The plan by Rep. Paul Ryan, R–Wis., and Democratic economist Alice Rivlin of the panel would seem to face steep odds with most other panel Democrats.

Ryan came under assault by Democrats and President Obama during this year's campaign over a similar plan, which would gradually turn the traditional "fee for service" Medicare program into a less generous voucher system that would lose purchasing power as time goes on.

That would mean seniors would have to pay higher premiums or receive less extensive health coverage.

Panel Democrat Alice Rivlin — a deficit hawk — endorsed the plan, which would not change the Medicare programs for current enrollees or for those 55 and older. The new system would start in 2021. The eligibility age for Medicare would gradually increase from 65 to 67.

The Ryan–Rivlin blueprint would also, in 2013, overhaul the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled by providing block grants to states instead of the current federal–state partnership.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/119xx/doc11966/11-17-Rivlin-Ryan_Preliminary_Analysis.pdf

Preliminary Analysis of the Rivlin-Ryan Health Care Proposal (Analysis transmitted by letter from Douglas Elmendorf, Director of the CBO, to Rep. Paul Ryan)

For purposes of this analysis, CBO assumed that all individuals projected to enroll in Medicare would use the proposed voucher. Voucher recipients would probably have to purchase less extensive coverage or pay higher premiums than they would under current law, for two reasons. First, most of the savings for Medicare under the proposal stem from reducing the amounts that the federal government would pay for enrollees on a per capita basis, relative to the projections under current law. Second, future beneficiaries would probably face higher premiums in the private market for a package of benefits similar to that currently provided by Medicare.

Comment by Don Mcanne of PNHP: Congressman Paul Ryan and former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin are both members of the Bowles/Simpson deficit commission. They have asked the Congressional Budget Office to analyze their proposal to reduce future federal health care expenditures by converting Medicare to a voucher program for purchasing private health plans, and by converting Medicaid into a block-grant program for the states.

If you read the analysis found at the link above, you would see that the deficits related to future spending in the Medicare and Medicaid programs would be reduced by this proposal. If your only goal is to cut the federal deficit, then the analysis would predict success, but at what cost?

Compared to the current Medicare program, the vouchers would purchase less coverage, or the premiums paid by the beneficiaries would be higher, or both. Merely shifting to private plans alone would result in higher premiums if the benefits were to remain the same as in the traditional Medicare program. Many Medicare beneficiaries are already burdened with excess medical debt, and the voucher proposal would increase the burden by both lowering the federal contribution and increasing the administrative waste characteristic of private plans.

Converting Medicaid into a block grant program uses the same principle as converting defined benefit programs into defined contribution programs. The federal government ends its exposure to the risk of ever-increasing costs by fixing its contribution to the states through a defined block grant. The state then bears the risk for increases in health care costs.

Of course, states are already heavily burdened by the costs of their Medicaid programs. Adding more to that burden further strains state budgets. The states are then put into a position of trying to balance reductions in health services with the greater deficit holes punched into the state budgets. Passing the problem from the federal taxpayer to the state taxpayer accomplishes nothing.

As the CBO analysis states, "Although the level of expected federal spending and the uncertainty surrounding that spending would decline, enrollees' spending for health care and the uncertainty surrounding that spending would increase."

What is our goal here? Appeasing anti-government budget hawks? Or removing financial barriers so that people can get the health care that they need?

The budget hawks say that we need to make hard choices. So what about the choice of a single payer monopsony - an improved Medicare for all? That would solve the budget deficit problem while enabling everyone to have the care that they need - not really very hard choices. Maybe it would be a hard choice for the hawks to accept a government program that would actually work, but let's hold them to their demand. If they think an improved Medicare for all is a hard choice, then so be it.

My comment: What we are looking at with raising Medicare eligibility age is a death sentence for at least one person I canvassed last month. An ironworker, he has already had three knee operations and he isn't even 50.

[BzaDem]

1. There's a reason why a proposal needs 14/18 votes to pass.

This has 2.

In reality, our health care cost problem is going to be solved by a public option, single payer, or (more likely) price controls. That won't happen now, but that will be what will likely eventually happen. In the mean time, nothing significant (like this) will pass relating to Medicare.

[eridani]

2. There is only a single voice on the commission speaking for working people

That would be Jan Schakowsky. I had hopes for Xavier Becerra, but he has said he'll "look at" Simpson-Bowles and Rivlin-Domenici. This is unacceptable. Any response to the latter two draft proposals other that FUCK THAT SHIT STRAIGHT TO HELL is completely unaccepable. They amount to recommending poverty, homelessness, and even death.

[Enthusiast]

10. Yes. Nothing underscores the

need for a single payer health care system like this kind of proposal.

[JDPriestly]

3. K&R

Medicare is appropriate at 65.

People tend to be laid off at some point between 50 and 65. And if some condition like high blood pressure or diabetes shows up during those years and is not treated, the costs in the later years of the patient can be much higher than they would have been had the costs been caught earlier. By the time you are 65, you really need a lot of preventive care in order to lower future medical costs. It is stupid to delay eligibility for Medicare -- self-defeating in fact.

You just cannot cut Medicare or Social Security. The benefits are already minimal, and Americans are not eligible for these programs until just about as late in life as you can possibly wait.

This is just the Shock Doctrine.

That is the only explanation I know of that explains why suddenly the debt is so important. Bush spent money like water. Suddenly Obama gets into office, and the whole world is worried about debt.
And no one seems to remember that it was that Republican hero, Ronald Reagan, who claimed that debt was not a problem -- ever.

If they are serious about cutting our debt, there is a simple and foolproof solution: withdraw from 1/2 of the military bases that we have overseas.

Chalmers Johnson said that there are 192 nations in the UN, but we have over 740 bases overseas. Whenever a Republican starts complaining to you about our debt, quote that information to him or her. We pay to rent the land for those bases. Those bases cost us a fortune -- and even if we need some of them, we certainly do not need all of them. We could close 1/2 of them, and no one would be the wiser -- except the countries in which the bases are located which would lose the money we pay them in rent and for other things.

[area51]

5. +1 n/t

[laughingliberal]

4. This has been the plan and was the reason it was so important to kill the early Medicare buy in

Fresh money going into Medicare from the healthier 55-65 year olds would have saved the current system and would have taken away the 'crisis' they will now use to shove this plan through.

Notice, too, the increased age. People over 50 are already being left unable to afford insurance and have to hope they can live til 65 when they are eligible for Medicare. Many do not make it. Leaving them uncovered for 2 more years will surely eliminate quite a few more and save a bundle.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

6. "die quickly"

seems to figure often into Republican plans for health care - and most everything else.

[laughingliberal]

7. Yes. nt

[laughingliberal]

8. kick nt

[TheKentuckian]

9. You were warned and the reply was a head count of Democrats

When you were challenged to look at the Democrats as individuals rather than counting on party affiliation the reply was a head count of Democrats.

If something like this does no pass right now, it eventually will. The CBO will back the voodoo math as I have long said because it will reduce Federal costs and now a "Democrat" has co-authored the nonsense and it will get steam.

Day after day, all you got is trust our corporate owned overlords or we will be under the thumb of our corporate owned overlords or in other words a bunch of inane double talk justified by partisan faith and fear of a mirror image.

[laughingliberal]

11. +1000 nt

[eridani]

12. Some of the strategists at PNHP are recommending getting your state legislators

--to protest to Congress about the massive hole that Medicaid block grants are going to blow in their budgets. Sounds good to me.