Many doctors refuse Medicare patients because payments are so low.

From the Wall Street Journal

Democratic leaders at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue continue to battle over whether a new government-run health plan, modeled after the popular Medicare program for seniors, must be included in health-reform legislation.

President Barack Obama told a New Hampshire town-hall meeting last month that “if we’re able to get something right like Medicare, then there should be a little more confidence that maybe the government can have a role.” Did the government really get Medicare right? Here are the top 10 reasons this program should not be a model for reform, and why it would be dangerous for the federal government to be put in charge of any more of our health sector:

1) Medicare is going bankrupt. The Medicare Trustees estimate that the program will run short of money starting in 2017. Medicare will drown in a sea of red ink, with spending over the next 75 years outpacing dedicated revenues by nearly $38 trillion.

2) Private payers are bailing out Medicare. According to Milliman, an independent actuarial firm, Medicare—and to an even greater extent, Medicaid—underpays doctors and hospitals, shifting costs to private insurers. Milliman estimates that the average family in a private PPO health plan pays an additional $1,788 a year to compensate for underpayments by Medicare and Medicaid, representing a “hidden tax” on commercial payers totaling $89 billion a year.

Providers could not keep their doors open without the higher payments from private insurers. A recent letter to Congress from 13 leading health-care delivery organizations, including the Mayo Clinic, said “many providers suffer great financial losses associated with treating Medicare patients.” They said that if these rates were expanded to patients who currently have private insurance, the result “will be unsustainable for even the nation’s most efficient, high quality providers, eventually driving them out of the market.” That means we would say goodbye to some of the best health-care systems in the country.

3) Expansion of entitlement programs threatens our economic security. Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf broke the bad news in July. Reform legislation before Congress would worsen the federal government’s already bleak budget outlook, increase the deficit, and drive the nation more deeply into debt. Instead of bending the cost curve down, Mr. Elmendorf told senators their reform proposal would “significantly increase” costs.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, September 12th, 2009 at 10:32 am and is filed under Failed Policy, Senior Citizens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.