MEDICARE SUPPLEMENT RAPID PROCESSING

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich spoke at Derry Medical Center in New Hampshire today and delivered an entire speech on healthcare without even mentioning the overhaul that seems to be causing such an uproar.

Gingrich also focused on platform less controversial with the GOP repealing President Obama’s health care reform in favor of a localized approach.

“It’s one thing to have personal health decisions decided locally by you, your doctor, your pharmacist,” Gingrich said. “It’s a very different, dangerous system if those decisions are made by a Washington bureaucrat who doesn’t know you.”

Gingrich commits to work to repeal the overhaul, which he called, “unconstitutional, unaffordable, unworkable and stunningly unfair.”

Gingrich however favors tax credits for individuals buying insurance and the expansion of health savings accounts.

Gingrich went further to say that Obama’s reform leads to corruption, as politically connected organizations are exempted from complying from government mandates.  He also said that the cost of government subsidies for insurance would lead to “ratioing by a nameless, faceless, unaccountable board of government bureaucrats.”

Regarding the qeustion for the growing number of insured youth under the reform’s requirement that insureers let parents’ policies cover children until the age of 26, he said, “If you tkae a 2,800 page bill, you can find 200 pages that are OK.  The other 2,600 are a disaster.”

A Derry retiree asked why “insurance company bureaucracies” controlling health care are better than government doing the same, Gingrich said he is not for “private bureaucrats” either.

Options in reducing Medicare spendings are as follows:

Privatize the Program…
Republicans in the House are really rooting to phase out the traditional fee for service Medicare Benefits and create this voucher like system that Ryan has proposed.

This particular proposal will shift the risk of rising healthcare costs from the government to the seniors of our country.  Higher deductible plans and co pays in private plans would encourage most seniors to seek cost effective care.  With the higher costs, most people would be forced to go without much needed care.

Recent polls show that this proposal is very unpopular among many voters.  Obviously independents and seniors.  The proposal however has helped Republicans lose a seat in Tuesdays special election in upstate New York.  Democrats stand strong in their oppose on the idea and will likely use it against Republicans in next years congressional and presidential elections.

Expand Payment Board Authority…

Obama’s healthcare overhaul last year created a new Independent Payment Advisory Board to help rein in Medicare spending.  This helps in the event that the costs exceed a growth rate target.  The recomendations will go into effect unless Congress acts.

The panel cannot propose premium increases, quality of care, or benefit reductions.  But the panel can cut costs.  However, this idea is still very unpopular.

Republicans did not like the idea of the creation of this advisory board.  Democrats do not like it either.  Hospitals and other healthcare providers are very skeptic as well.  Congress is unlikely to go along with expanding its authority.

Reduce spending for prescription drugs…

Medicare has a huge purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices with this.  Democrats like this, but Republicans say it would be the same as imposing government price controls.

The Medicare drug program is provided mostly through private part d plans.  The only other option is to create a government run plan for beneficiaries.  Democrats support the idea but Republicans oppose it tall, arguing that this would impose price controls and shift costs to the private sector.

Update on Medicare’s fee design and cost sharing….

By updating the Medicare fee for service design, would encourage patients to seek more cost effective care.  Beneficiaries would have to pay more out of pocket expenses going this route.  If we cap those expenses it would help build public support for such a plan, as the current plan does not have a cap for out of pocket expenses.

Most seniors purchase Medigap policies privately to cover the costs not paid by Medicare basic benefits.  Some budgets have proposed forcing those plans to impose a deductible before the supplemental insurance benefit would kick in.

The argument here is the share costs to patients.  This will indeed save Medicare money by discouraging uneccesary tests and visits to doctors.  Medigap plans are very popular and the proposal will very likely meet resistence in Congress.

“My plan will include a series of options that people can choose from, one of which will be to stay in the current program,” the former Minnesota governor told reporters after a speech at the Cato Institute on Wednesday. “We’re going to have some other attractive options that I think are going to make a big difference.”

Pawlenty did not go into specifics.  He refused to answer questions about the the Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s senior voucher idea.  Pawlentys campaign will roll out a series of proposals on the Medicare issue in the near future.

“It’ll be different from Congressman Ryan’s proposal,” Pawlenty said.

House speaker Newt Gingrich was put under the microscope last week for calling Ryan’s plan “radicall” and “right-wing social engineering.”  He has since said that the comments were misconstrued and apologized to Ryan.

He carefully chose his words in his Cato Institute speech on Wednesday.  Pawlenty frequently praised Ryan’s courage and leadership in this matter.

“In general,” he said, “I think the direction of it is positive, but I’m going to have my own plan.”

Pawlenty has been on a hard truth tour since formally announcing Monday in Iowa with a critique of ethanol subsidies.  Tuesday, he was in Florida Social Security, later arriving in Washington to take on government spending.

Pawlenty wants to shrink the federal workforce as people retire.  His idea is to replace one employee for every two that retire.  He also proposed freezing the pay of federal workers.  He did not include military workers in this freeze.

“That’s just not fair,” he said. “We can’t have the people who are getting paid by the taxpayers getting a better deal than the taxpayers themselves. These things have to be reconciled.”

After the speech concluded, Pawlenty touched on the attach against Obamas involvment on the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler for favoring unions at the expense of equity holders.

“They would have restructured anyhow through the existing process of bankruptcy,” he said. “And what they got was a President Obama-guided, sweetheart, pre-arranged bankruptcy.”

Pawlenty added, “It is yet another example of crony capitalism.”

“We can no longer let politicians in Washington deny the danger to Medicare, the danger is too real, and the health of our nation’s seniors is too far important,” Ryan said in an online internet conference.

On Tuesday Democrats won a vacant House seat upstate New York, a usual Republican stronghold.  The election was a referendum on the plan to privatize Medicare.

Ryan proposal suffered a setback on Wednesday when the Senate blocked the measure on a vote of 57-40.  This clearly will not become the law anytime soon.

There were five Republicans whom joined the Democrats in opposing this.  Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Olympia Snowe of Maine were both moderates up for re-election next year.  Susan Collins, also of Maine, Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska moderate, and Rand Paul of Kentucky opposed.

Republicans work hard to build up support for the plan, as they know this will be a huge issue in next years congressional and presidential election.

This proposal will end the well known fee for service Medicare and will create a voucher like system for future seniors to purchase Medical Coverage from Private Insurers.

“We aren’t going to abandon this,” a senior Republican aide said. “We want to save Medicare, while Democrats would let it die. Those must be the first words out of our mouths from now on , ‘We want to save Medicare.’”

“Not all Senate Republicans agree with the Ryan plan, but they all agree that something must be done to save Medicare,” the aide said.

The crowd seemed sharply divided between her allies and her opponents, Herrera Beutler explained the budget plan offered by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, for which she voted for last month.

One attendee shouted “Liar!” when she said that the Ryan plan “protects Medicare.” And when she said, “If you are 55 or older right now, your Medicare won’t change,” another attendee  shouted out “Our children’s will.”

After another round speaking, she said, “If you want to hear the facts, you are going to have to let me speak.” And as the evening wore on they did let her speak and several people got to ask her questions, but in some cases it was a matter of debate.

“All the money is fungible, and at the end of the day the deficit has to be lowered,” the California Democrat said the day the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling expired.

The government has 11 weeks to raise the debt ceiling or will be considered in default.

Last week John Boehner set the Republican position at no tax increases, and any dollar to raise the debt ceiling must be accompanied by a dollar reduction in future spending.

“Did he say then that The Republicans would vote for avoiding the default if we don’t move forward?” Pelosi responded Monday, noting that Republican support was hard to find when The Democrats have worked with the Bush administration to enact the Troubled Asset Relief Program

Now we must reduce the deficit … we must put everything on the table,” she said. “We’ve got to look at cuts, for sure—waste, fraud, abuse, duplication, obsolescence, you name it.”

Cuts can’t be so draconian that growth is stifled, particularly in education and research and development. This just won’t work.

Pelosi supports making the tax code “simpler and fairer” for business and upping domestic production for oil, natural gas and renewable resources.

She favors removing tax subsidies for the Oil companies, the subject of a Senate Finance Committee hearing as of last week.

The Health Insurance taxable earnings estimates were much lower than expected in year 2010, authors said that these earnings are expected to grow and increase over last year’s assumptions for 2011 through 2019. Health Insurance spendings have exceeded household income each year since 2008 and will do so until 2024, when the fund is expected to become “exhausted.”

According to the recent report, $32.3 billion in trust fund assets were recovered to cover shortfalls in income that were relative to expenditures. Assets at the beginning of 2011 were $272 billion but the authors expect the asset balance to fall below the recommended levels in early 2011, one earlier than last year’s report expected.

“The Health Insurance trust fund has not met the Trustees’ formal test of short-range financial adequacy since 2003,” the report has stated.

The authors say that the Supplementary Medical Insurance trust fund is adequately financed for the next 10 years because Part B and D incomes are continuesly being reset annually, the authors said that Part B costs will continue to increase, and in fact have increased by an average of 6.9 percent annually over the last five years. A 4.7 percent annual growth rate is expected over the next five years; however, the trustees wrote that “this rate is unrealistically constrained due to a physician fee reduction of over 29 percent that would occur in 2012 under current law.”

Finally, the authors noted that if Congress overrides the reduction like they did between 2003 and 2011, the Part B increase rate would be 7.5 percent. Meanwhile, Part D expenditures are expected to be 9.7 percent through 2020. In comparison, the U.S. economy is expected to grow 5.2 percent annually, lower than both Part D and Part B estimates.

“The trust fund does not meet the test of long-range close actuarial balance,” the report stated.

“The financial projections in this report indicate a need for additional steps to address Medicare’s remaining financial challenges. Consideration of further reforms should occur in the near future. The sooner solutions are enacted, the more flexible and gradual they can be,” the authors concluded. “We believe that prompt action is necessary to address both the exhaustion of the HI trust fund and the anticipated excess growth in HI, SMI Part B, and SMI Part D expenditures.”

After viewing the ad, an independent fact-checking organization and a leading defender of the programs said, “DO NOT BELIEVE THIS.”

The ad’s central claim is “bogus,” said Eugene Kiely, deputy director at FactCheck.org, which describes itself as a “nonpartisan, nonprofit ‘consumer advocate’ for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.”

The National Committee that Preservea Social Security and Medicare has endorsed Hochul, the Democratic candidate and said Corwin, “has no basis whatsoever to make this claim.”

The new address in Medicare issue is deeply hurting Corwin’s chances of winning next weeks  special election for Congress in the Republican.

The Rothenberg Political Report, said Monday that the running is now pointing toward Hochul, the Erie County clerk who has made opposition to Medicare cuts the main focus of her upcoming campaign.

This new ad appears to be Corwin’s attempt to detour attention from her support of a House Republican budget plan that would completely change Medicare from the guaranteed benefit into  new system with government subsidies for future benefit holders now 55 or younger to buy health insurance on their own.

The new ad says, “The truth is it’s Hochul who says she would cut Social Security and Medicare.”

The current argument is based on a quote from last week’s debate, in which Hochul said: “Everything should be on the table” in budget talks,  “entitlements, defense spending but also revenues.”

After reviewing commercial ad, Kiely, of FactCheck.org, reported the Corwin campaign for interpreting Hochul’s “on the table” comment as an attack on programs that our senior citizens depend upon.

“That’s bogus,” he said. “Just saying everything is on the table does not equate Social Security or Medicare cuts.”

AARP, has also agreed that future  modifications in Social Security and Medicare must be considered to guarantee long-term financial stability.

Matthew Harakal, Corwin’s spokesman, continues to defended the ad’s claim that Hochul wants to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Hochul supports President Obama’s new proposed health care law, which, Harakal noted, will include $500 billion in Medicare reductions in lower subsidies for private insurers offering “Medicare Advantage” coverages around the Country.

Hochul had previously said she doesn’t even support the part of the health care law that trimmed that $500 billion.

Hocel said, “I never said the health care plan was perfect,” who also made the comment regarding the Corwin ad “laughable” and “a sign of desperation.”

This new ad is also suggesting that Hochul is waging “a false campaign about Jane Corwin’s position on Medicare.” Asked to specify just how Hochul had lied about Corwin’s stance on the issue, Harakal cited Hochul’s claim that the Republican wants to “end Medicare.”

The ad shows that Corwin said she would vote for the GOP budget that will reform Medicare. This wont end it, but offers to save the program.

Harakal said Corwin simply wants to avert the program’s hospital trust fund being insolvent by 2024,

“They’re deliberately trying to twist and blatantly lie about Jane’s position,” Harakal said.

“To me, it’s just blatant hypocrisy for the Republican candidate to go after Kathy Hochul, who’s been so clear about protecting these programs, when Jane Corwin wants to not just cut [Medicare], she’s talking about eliminating it as a social insurance program,” said Max Richtman, executive vice president/acting CEO at National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

Hochul and Jack Davis, have suggested taking a closer look at Medicare and Social Security but have not moved forward with reform plans as of yet.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Republican budget plan that Corwin backs, would significantly boost the program’s cost for participants if it goes into effect in 2021 for people who are now 55 or younger.

In the year 2022, the typical 65-year-old would pay $5,630 a year out of pocket for health care under the current Medicare program, but the outlay will rise this number to $12,500 under the GOP plan.

Harakal said Corwin are willing to consider alternatives to the Republican plan, advanced by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, so long as they help Medicare’s solvency.

Still, Hochul’s attacks seem to be sticking.

A lot of recent negative ads have damaged Davis, and voters are not however jumping to Corwin, the Rothenberg report said. “Democrats have been pounding Corwin for supporting Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, including dramatic changes to Medicare,” Rothenberg said. “Those attacks apparently have made it difficult for Corwin to attract disaffected Davis voters.”

225 senior citizens, disabled residents and citizens from organizations within the communities have gathered outside the Economic Club in Chicago on May 16 while Ryan presented the new plan that he has named  “a roadmap to prosperity,” according to Emily Stuart, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Alliance for Retired Americans.

The protesters, are calling Ryan’s plan “a roadmap to ruin,” Stuart said.

“It is irresponsible and unnecessary to talk about radically changing Social Security and Medicare,” said Katie Jordan of the Illinois Alliance for Retired Americans. “These programs keep our most vulnerable people from falling into poverty. It is not another stock in your portfolio.”

Ryan plans to balance the budget by privatizing Medicare alone and cutting funds for Medicaid and Social Security. The protesters claim Ryan’s plan will force 631,024 Illinois residents to lose Medicaid.

“Efforts to privatize Medicare and defund Medicaid will dramatically impact local economies, cost millions of jobs and leave countless senior citizens and disabled Americans with no safety net,” leaders for the group said. “It is time for Congress to get serious about job creation and economic growth.”

“Representative Paul Ryan’s radical plan to eliminate Social Security as we know it was rejected by the American people in 2005, and is opposed by 85 percent of Americans today,” McNary said.