Grandpa Harry and Grandma Louise
Word from all those town hall meetings members of Congress are having back home this week is that lots of seniors are showing up scared that all the talk of health care reform in Washington, DC might just hurt them.
The seniors’ reasoning goes that Congress is getting ready to cut Medicare in order to pay for the uninsured grandkids' newfound access to a health insurance policy of their own.
Watch for the senior effect on efforts to pay for health insurance legislation once the members of Congress return next week from the recess.
Apparently, it’s not just doctors and hospitals complaining about Medicare cuts.
Or, maybe its doctors and hospitals giving their senior patients an ear full.
3 comments:
With pension funds, 401Ks, IRAs and other correlated investments tanking, and, private healthplans still cherry picking, applying pre-ex provisions, and withdrawing coverage (most recently PFFS), It is no wonder many senior Americans feel that Medicare and Social Security are the only solid things they have going. With real solutions needed, Harry and Louise scare tactics are the best our private insurors can come up with. The doctors obviously continue to have more impact on their patients than the insurance companies that don't even offer a real person to talk to when their insured needs service. Insurance companies cannot manage doctors, so why do they each waste their money building managed care infrastructures trying to "Manage Care"?
I belong to the Health Issues committee of a retiree's group in New York State. Because the group includes retirees from many different employers, some have excellent employer-sponsored retiree benefits which they are afraid of losing, while others have only Medicare.
I can see how Grandpa Harry and Granma Louise could catch their attention.
Our committee urges our members to stay vigilant on the debate. We remind them too that those who have no employer-sponsored health coverage or can not afford Medigap insurance, must advocate to be included in any subsidies granted to low and middle income folks to pay for supplemental insurance that would cover the out-of-pocket costs of original fee-for-service Medicare. For those without supplemental insurance, traditional Medicare covers only about half of the costs, and for Medicare Advantage plans high out of pocket costs come with serious illnesses like cancer.
employers are scared of more medciare cuts as well, underpayments by medicare and medicaid already increase the cost of private insurance 10-20%. If they cut payments further that is more cost shifting employers will need to cover.
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