Perspective              

People with Medicare Want a Choice of Health Care Providers Not Health Care Plans

A survey by the Medicare Rights Center (MRC), a nonprofit consumer service organization dedicated to helping older adults and people with disabilities get good, affordable health care, shows that people with Medicare overwhelmingly support both repealing federal tax cuts to pay for a prescription drug benefit and having choice of doctors available under Original Medicare over choice of Medicare health plans.

MRC recently surveyed 200 of its clients focusing on what older and disabled Americans value most in their health coverage and their perspectives on the health care system. Eighty-nine percent of those surveyed said they support repealing part of the federal tax cuts to pay for Medicare prescription drug coverage. Ninety percent of them said having an unrestricted choice of health care providers is very important, while only half as many reported having a choice of health plans as very important.

"The irony here is that the government calls its Medicare HMO program 'Medicare + Choice.' The real choice most older and disabled Americans want is to choose the doctors they want, anywhere they want, when they need to see them," said Robert M. Hayes, president of MRC. "Medicare HMOs increasingly restrict the 'choice' that most Americans care most about."

As President Bush and Congress chart the future of Medicare, they should consider the opinions of older and disabled Americans and the kinds of choices they value.

To read the report, Directions for Medicare: Perspectives of Older and Disabled Americans, click here.

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