Asclepios
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Wait Till Next Year
December 20, 2007 • Volume 7, Issue 49The score card on health care for this session of Congress is pretty grim.
Both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed legislation using $35 billion in additional cigarette taxes to extend health coverage to four million uninsured children. President Bush repeatedly vetoed the bill, however, and there were not enough votes in the House to override the veto.
Big Tobacco: $35 billion (2008-2012)
Uninsured Children: 0The House passed legislation authorizing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices under the Part D prescription drug program. The Senate rejected the bill.
Drug Manufacturers: $30 billion (2008)
People with Medicare: 0The House passed a bill eliminating the excess subsidies Medicare pays to insurance middlemen, using the money to shore up Medicare’s finances, help more low-income people with Medicare with their drug and medical expenses, and improve Medicare’s coverage of preventive and mental health services. Backed by the threat of a presidential veto, the Senate stripped the bill of any subsidy reductions to Medicare private health plans and rejected any expansion of low-income assistance programs or coverage for mental health or preventive services.
Insurance Companies: $50 billion (2009-2012)
People with Medicare: 0Of course, this is not the first year that Congress and the president have handed victories to special interests at the expense of the health care of the American people. It took 20 years, from President Truman’s 1945 introduction of a plan to provide universal health care coverage to President Johnson signing the Medicare bill in 1965, for older adults to receive guaranteed health coverage under Medicare. It took another seven years, until 1972, for Medicare to cover people with disabilities (and they still have to wait two years for their coverage to begin).
Still, the American people placed a lot of hope that the slate of lawmakers elected in 2006 would help stem the ever rising cost of health care and the ever expanding ranks of the uninsured. It’s clear that the team has a few holes in it. We need more legislators in both chambers of Congress (including 60 senators) and a president who are all committed to addressing the health care crisis in this country and willing to stand up to the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical manufacturers and any other lobby that puts its self-interest above the health care of Americans.
With a team like that, we can protect and improve Medicare and extend it so that every person in this county, young or old, can receive the health care he or she needs. Next year, we get to elect the players to that team and get rid of the bums that let us down this year. We need to make sure all the candidates know we are taking our responsibility seriously.
Medical Record
“The combined savings to the government and beneficiaries from having Medicare offer the drug benefit as an add-on to the traditional program, and to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical industry, would be close to $30 billion in 2008. Even this figure is somewhat conservative since more beneficiaries would enroll in the program if it offered drugs at lower prices” (Celebrating Pork: The Dubious Success of the Medicare Drug Benefit, Center for Economic and Policy Research, March 2007).
“[Medicare Advantage] overpayments significantly weaken Medicare's finances. The overpayments will total $54 billion over the next five years and $149 billion over ten years, according to CBO. That puts an added strain on Medicare, moving up by two years (from 2021 to 2019) the date when its trust fund will become insolvent, according to the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services” (“Curbing Medicare Advantage Overpayments Would Strengthen Medicare,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, December 5, 2007).
“When Medicare and Medicaid were signed into law on July 30, 1965, former President Harry Truman received the first Medicare card. He would be shocked that 40 years later, more than 45 million Americans have no health coverage, half of all personal bankruptcies are health-related, and lack of universal insurance is increasingly hurting our economy as well as our health” (“Time for Health Care for All on Medicare's 40th Anniversary,” Holly Sklar, August 1, 2005).
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Medicare Part D Monitoring Project
The Medicare Rights Center (MRC) would like to hear about your experience, or that of someone you know, enrolled in a Medicare private drug plan. With information about what the issues are with Medicare Part D, we will be able to demand that those problems be fixed.
Submit your story at http://www.medicarerights.org/partdstories.html.
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The Louder Our Voice, the Stronger Our Message
Asclepios—named for the Greek and Roman god of medicine who, acclaimed for his healing abilities, was at one point the most worshipped god in Greece—is a weekly e-newsletter designed to keep you up-to-date with Medicare program and policy issues, and advance advocacy strategies to address them. Please help build awareness of key Medicare consumer issues by forwarding this action alert to your friends and encouraging them to subscribe today.
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The Medicare Rights Center (MRC) is the largest independent source of Medicare information and assistance in the United States. Founded in 1989, MRC helps older adults and people with disabilities get good, affordable health care.
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