Three Ways To Save Medicare

[lakhota]

Three Ways To Save Medicare Paul Ryan Doesn’t Want You To Know About

Across the country, Main Street Americans are speaking out against a GOP budget plan that would effectively end Medicare.

In taking aim at Medicare, these conservative members of Congress are claiming that they are actually “saving Medicare” from financial ruin and that there is no possible choice other than to privatize the program and throw seniors to the insurance industry. They say this to justify a plan that the Congressional Budget Office says would have the elderly spending the majority of their income on health care.

Yet what Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — the architect of the plan to end Medicare — and other right-wingers don’t want you to know is that there are actually numerous way to shore up the fiscal solvency of Medicare that wouldn’t involve such a dangerous privatization scheme.

ThinkProgress has assembled three different policy options that, if enacted, could help Medicare’s future financial issues and save the taxpayer billions of dollars:

1. Empower Medicare To Negotiate For Lower Drug Prices: One policy option that would be very simple to enact and would not require any sort of increased spending or expansion of government would be to simply allow Medicare to use its bulk purchasing power to negotiate with drugmakers for lower prices. The program is currently banned from doing so, thanks to the clout of the drug industry. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) estimates that doing this could save as much as $156 billion over 10 years.

2. Allow Drug Reimportation From Canada: One of the major costs in the U.S. health care system that drives up the costs not only in the private sector but also among Medicare are the costs of prescription drugs. One very easy was to greatly relieve this cost is to eliminate protectionist barriers and allow the free importation of prescription drugs from our neighbors like Canada. A failed measure proposed by Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and John McCain (R-AZ) to do exactly that in 2009 estimated that doing so would save consumers $80 billion over ten years.

3. Globalize Medicare: Another protectionist barrier and detriment to free trade in the U.S. health care system is that seniors currently aren’t allowed to use their Medicare insurance system outside of the United States. An alternative to this would be to drop these trade barriers and allow seniors on Medicare to seek care abroad, where services are much cheaper. Economist Dean Baker estimates that if fifty percent of Medicare beneficiaries opted for this globalized option, then taxpayers would save more than $40 billion a year by 2020. President Obama dismissed this option when asked about it at a recent town hall meeting.

The primary reason these three common sense initiatives have not been enacted in the United States is because of deep opposition from the drug industry, for-profit hospitals, and other medical-industrial complex interest groups. Yet they all present simple and effective ways to lower costs and help shore up the finances of the Medicare program. If Ryan and other so-called reform advocates were serious about ensuring the fiscal solvency of the Medicare program and lowering health care costs for Americans, they would not remove these options from the debate.

thinkprogress.org/2011/04/30/three-ways-save-medicare/

NOTE: There are some live supporting links in the above article that can only be accessed by clicking on the above link.

[lakhota]

Paul Ryan vs. the Truth

There's a lot of annoying mendacity in Paul Ryan's budget proposal, but the most annoying by far is his repeated insistence that under his plan seniors would get "the same kind of health-care program that members of Congress enjoy." Aside from the fact that he's offered no details about how or why private insurers would magically decide to provide the same kind of benefits to the elderly that they do to members of Congress, he's just flatly lying about the most important part of his proposal: namely that it will force seniors to pay far, far more for Medicare than they do now — and far, far more than members of Congress pay for their health insurance. If you're a millionaire, maybe this counts as the "same kind" anyway, but for the rest of us it doesn't.

Here's the difference: under Ryan's plan, the government pays a set amount for Medicare and you pay for the rest. So far, that's pretty similar to the congressional plan. But that set amount goes up very slowly under Ryan's plan — much more slowly than the actual rise in the cost of health insurance — which means that seniors have to pay a bigger and bigger share of the total premium cost as the years go by. CAP's Tony Carrk and Nicole Cafarella ran the numbers to see how that would have worked out if Ryan's formula had applied to Congress over the past decade, and the dismal results are on the right, below.

Under the actual congressional plan, family premiums have gone up from $2,500 to $5,000. Under Ryan's plan, premiums would have gone up to about $8,300. That's a difference of $3,300 in only ten years. Over the course of 30 years, the difference would be more like $10-15,000.

That's a pretty whopping difference, and it would be even bigger for Medicare beneficiaries since Medicare starts from a bigger base. The result is that lots of seniors just flatly wouldn't be able to afford to buy Medicare. They wouldn't have enough money to pay their share of the premium, and that means they'd be uninsured and uncovered. Ryan has, of course, offered up a bunch of handwaving about how indigent seniors would get bigger subsidies, but unsurprisingly has been pretty sparing with any details. If he explained things, after all, everyone would immediately figure out (a) just how miserly his plan is, and (b) how much it would actually cost to support all those seniors who couldn't afford the astronomical premiums his plan forces on them.

The end result of all this is debatable. What's not debatable, however, is whether his plan is "the same kind of health-care program that members of Congress enjoy." It's not. It's not even close.

motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/04/paul-ryan-vs-truth

[hello fromWarsaw]

...not only that- it won't save money!
Google Paul Krugman, NYT Blogs- see a Noble prize winner SCREAMING that Pubs and their pundits are lying ...

"April 29, 2011, 9:26 am- Flim Flammed

Last year, when I described Paul Ryan as a flim flam man, many Beltway types were deeply annoyed. They had decided that he was serious and sincere — worthy of receiving fiscal responsibility awards — and did not want to hear any negatives. And even after the cracks in the House budget proposal became apparent, much of the commentariat clung to the view that whatever you might think of Ryan’s priorities, he really is serious and sincere.But he isn’t.
Jon Cohn points out that the real question about the Ryan plan isn’t whether it reduces the deficit in the right way; it’s whether it reduces the deficit at all. And Cohn doesn’t even take on the giant magic asterisk on the tax part of the plan: Ryan claims that he will keep revenue at 19 percent of GDP despite large tax cuts, by closing loopholes — but has said nothing at all about which loopholes would be closed. The truth is that this is almost surely a deficit-increasing plan, not a deficit-reducing plan.Meanwhile, Jon Chait looks at Ryan being interviewed about his plan and sees “a stream of misleading and outright false claims”. Notably, his denial of the plain fact that his plan hurts the poor while benefiting the rich — and the evasive language used to obscure what it really going on — is exactly the kind of thing we got accustomed to during the Bush years.
I don’t know when if ever the Beltway crowd will admit it, but they were, indeed, flim flammed; the man they decided was an upright, honest deficit hawk is in fact an evasive, dissembling guy who wants to use the deficit, not end it."

[Deleted]

New World Order, North American Union, what did I miss??

[formerexpat]

estimates that doing this could save as much as $156 billion over 10 years.

$15.6 billion per year - ehh, wrong answer - try again.

The other two "solutions" save $50bn a year - which is far less than the Medicare fraud per year currently. Opening Medicare up overseas only asks for an explosion in Medicare fraud.

There is over $100 TRILLION of unfunded liabilities. Major changes are necessary - the governments failed attempt at being in the insurance industry [both Medical and annuities] is painfully clear to the citizens.

[hello fromWarsaw]

#3- Everything!

[hello fromWarsaw]

#4 And where do you get these "facts"? Moo haha ;D

[cme1201]

3. Globalize Medicare: Another protectionist barrier and detriment to free trade in the U.S. health care system is that seniors currently aren’t allowed to use their Medicare insurance system outside of the United States.

This is about the dumbest idea I have EVER heard of. Sure lets pay doctors in third world countries

[formerexpat]

#4 And where do you get these "facts"? Moo haha ;D

As a supposedly educated fella, I expect you to be able to do the leg work and provide the sources to this board that dispute my figures. I'm tired of providing you information that is supported, only to get an uneducated response back from you.

And, why are you making cow noises at me?

[hello fromWarsaw]

Because you get all your facts from the same BS propaganda machine- you really ought to WAKE UP- NOTHING to panic about, thanks to Dems AS ALWAYS...You are sorely misled by the Koch Bros. and other greedy mega rich swine...save your soul!! Moo ha ha...

Typically, someone reminds us that our 14 trillion dollar debt is comparable in size to our “14 trillion dollar economy,” and then compares the total unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare to this. And of course, the approximately 100 trillion dollar potential liability sounds like it dwarfs our entire national economy.
The problem, of course, is that this comparison is between ONE YEAR of the United States’s economic output (GDP), versus SEVENTY FIVE years of accumulated underfunding of the social safety net. Let’s put these into comparable units.
We could either (a) figure out how much the unfunded liabilities amount to, compared to the full 75 years of economic output, or (b) we can determine what the per-year amount of unfunded liability is compared to ONE year of economic output. Both give one the same answer, of course.
If we assume that today’s GDP represents an average, without systematic long-term growth or decline, and since the unfunded liability is being discussed in “today’s dollars,” then 75 years worth of today’s GDP is 1,050 trillion dollars. A little over 1 quadrillion dollars. The entire unfunded liability for the social safety net is thus 9.5% of our economic productivity over the next 75 years. Breaking that down on a per-year unfunded liability basis gives one about 1.33 trillion in unfunded liabilities per year. Again, about 9.5% of our economic productivity.
That’s a big drain on our economy, since we also spend a good chunk of our productivity on federal, state, and local spending.
But it’s not unthinkably large, nor catastrophic…
What does this mean for politics in America today?
1. We’re bullshitting ourselves about the problems, basically, and which ones need to be solved. We’re focusing on discretionary federal spending instead of entitlement program finances.
2. Nothing we do on the scale of the current discretionary federal budget will break the bank in the long term. Education spending and regulation of food safety are not leading the U.S. to the brink of disaster, and we need to call out the folks that claim it is.
3. We can fix the deficit and whittle down the U.S. federal debt within the framework of existing fiscal policy, without “inflating away” the debt. Our country has a robust enough economy that we have the resources.
4. Our efforts need to be focused FIRST on Medicare and health care costs in general, and figuring out a sustainable solution. SECOND, we should readjust Social Security funding and benefits policy to close the 75 year gap. The sooner we do it, the less painful the adjustments will need to be.
Americans aren’t accustomed to having the political dialogue in terms of “trillions” of dollars. So everything about this is scary, and easily borrowed by demagogues to push their own agendas.
It’s time we all got comfortable with these numbers, and realize that over the next two generations, our economy will produce over 1 QUADRILLION dollars in revenue — goods and services — and that we absolutely can handle the liabilities and issues we face.
If we want to.

[straydog]

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Why can't we just abolish all of the alphabet soup federal departments (DOEd, DOC, DEA, ATF, DOA, DOEn, DOT, EPA, etc.), and allow the states to take over these duties?

This would save us untold billions and billions (maybe even trillions?) of dollars. Then that savings could be used to shore up Medicare and Medicaid.

[Deleted]

Shrinking gov't that much just scares the snot out of people, stray. I would be glad to trust my Gov. Brewer to do the job.

[hello fromWarsaw]

I'd rather do away with states- just make things way too complicated for travelling dudes ya know- and those macho red states take all the blue states money...
btw, everything you know is wrong ;D

[straydog]

Apr 30, 2011 22:25:47 GMT -5 @krickitt said:

Shrinking gov't that much just scares the snot out of people, stray. I would be glad to trust my Gov. Brewer to do the job.

Exactly. The governors know what is going on much better than some federal bureaucrat. What might work well in AZ might be a disaster in N.J., and vice-versa.

[Deleted]

Apr 30, 2011 23:26:50 GMT -5 @straydog said:

Apr 30, 2011 22:25:47 GMT -5 @krickitt said:

Shrinking gov't that much just scares the snot out of people, stray. I would be glad to trust my Gov. Brewer to do the job.

Exactly. The governors know what is going on much better than some federal bureaucrat. What might work well in AZ might be a disaster in N.J., and vice-versa.

yes, and easier to flee your state than your country.

[straydog]

Apr 30, 2011 23:20:21 GMT -5 hello fromWarsaw said:

I'd rather do away with states- just make things way too complicated for travelling dudes ya know- and those macho red states take all the blue states money...
btw, everything you know is wrong ;D

Sorry W, but it's the BLUE states that are all headed for bankruptcy, CA, N.J., N.Y., WI, etc. And it was the stimulus (porkulus) bill that we all had to pay for that extended the problem (funding overpaid and over compensated state workers). And CA still want a bailout??

Yup, a national police force, a national drivers license, and all rules and regulations coming from an all powerful central government. These things usually work quite well in a totalitarian system.

Let me correct you on your last point, everything that I USED to know was wrong, back when I was a 'Dem Dupe'.

[straydog]

Apr 30, 2011 23:29:44 GMT -5 @xmascookie said:

Apr 30, 2011 23:26:50 GMT -5 @straydog said:

Exactly. The governors know what is going on much better than some federal bureaucrat. What might work well in AZ might be a disaster in N.J., and vice-versa.

yes, and easier to flee your state than your country.

Yeah, or so Boeing thought.

[Deleted]

Apr 30, 2011 23:50:40 GMT -5 @straydog said:

Apr 30, 2011 23:29:44 GMT -5 @xmascookie said:

yes, and easier to flee your state than your country.

Yeah, or so Boeing thought.

amazing

[hello fromWarsaw]

Stray- sorry, but those blue states get 80 cents back on their federal tax dollars, while Fl, Al, etc get 1.20 to 1.66 for Alabama...THAT"S a PIA. ;D

Go to my "The GOP LIES thread...for example the 103 trillion unfunded liabilities above... but tomorrow it'll be there again....

Got a Dem one?

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

1. Empower Medicare To Negotiate For Lower Drug Prices: One policy option that would be very simple to enact and would not require any sort of increased spending or expansion of government would be to simply allow Medicare to use its bulk purchasing power to negotiate with drugmakers for lower prices. The program is currently banned from doing so, thanks to the clout of the drug industry. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) estimates that doing this could save as much as $156 billion over 10 years.

This is fancy talk for government price fixing. This will lead to shortages, rationing, and eventually the complete unavailability of healthcare products and services.

This reads as if a naive little child wrote it. It completely misses the point that the government isn't Wal-Mart. It's a veiled attempt at dressing up government price fixing in fancy free-market sounding words like "bulk purchasing power" and "negotiate with drug makers for lower prices" but we know government doesn't "negotiate" anything. Government dictates, and there's a term for that: price fixing.

Examples of the failures of price fixing are too numerous to count, including the government wage and price controls that led to the employer based health care system we have today, and the result of that-- the two classes of people- employed with healthcare, or the depended of an employee with healthcare, or unemployed or underemployed with no healthcare.

2. Allow Drug Reimportation From Canada: One of the major costs in the U.S. health care system that drives up the costs not only in the private sector but also among Medicare are the costs of prescription drugs. One very easy was to greatly relieve this cost is to eliminate protectionist barriers and allow the free importation of prescription drugs from our neighbors like Canada. A failed measure proposed by Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and John McCain (R-AZ) to do exactly that in 2009 estimated that doing so would save consumers $80 billion over ten years.

Very closely related to the first idea- price fixing. As usual, the savings are grossly overstated, the risks downplayed, and the costs to set up and maintain the system are not feasible at this juncture.

www.marketwatch.com/story/report-says-drug-imports-would-save-little-money

WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- Drug reimportation won't save much money overall and might hinder incentives for companies to develop new drugs, according to a government report issued Tuesday.

The report, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, indicated the benefits of allowing wholesalers and pharmacies to import cheaper drugs from Canada and other countries don't outweigh the risks involved, and the extra costs in overseeing pharmaceutical traffic.

"The results of the task force report should reinforce President Bush's opposition to drug importation, as well as the Republican leadership's position on the issue in Congress," said Greg Kelly, a Washington affairs analyst for Susquehanna Financial Group.

A 13-member task force examining the issue said a large, commercial system could make drug reimportation safe and feasible, but it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to set up and maintain.

3. Globalize Medicare: Another protectionist barrier and detriment to free trade in the U.S. health care system is that seniors currently aren’t allowed to use their Medicare insurance system outside of the United States. An alternative to this would be to drop these trade barriers and allow seniors on Medicare to seek care abroad, where services are much cheaper. Economist Dean Baker estimates that if fifty percent of Medicare beneficiaries opted for this globalized option, then taxpayers would save more than $40 billion a year by 2020. President Obama dismissed this option when asked about it at a recent town hall meeting.

Ha! This is a funny one. You think there's fraud and abuse now-- try tracking down a Medicare payment to some herbalist in Thailand. This one has to be a joke.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Apr 30, 2011 22:17:32 GMT -5 @straydog said:

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Why can't we just abolish all of the alphabet soup federal departments (DOEd, DOC, DEA, ATF, DOA, DOEn, DOT, EPA, etc.), and allow the states to take over these duties?

This would save us untold billions and billions (maybe even trillions?) of dollars. Then that savings could be used to shore up Medicare and Medicaid.

This would require statists to give up power and control- something they're not apt to do voluntarily.

States are going to have to take control back through court challenges, through legislation, and just plain old nullification.

And FWIW, California has been a leader in nullifying the federal drug laws with respect to marijuana in particular. We just need to expand that philosophy-- we know what's best in our state, thank you-- to other issues, and other states.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Apr 30, 2011 22:04:05 GMT -5 hello fromWarsaw said:

Because you get all your facts from the same BS propaganda machine- you really ought to WAKE UP- NOTHING to panic about, thanks to Dems AS ALWAYS...You are sorely misled by the Koch Bros. and other greedy mega rich swine...save your soul!! Moo ha ha...

Typically, someone reminds us that our 14 trillion dollar debt is comparable in size to our “14 trillion dollar economy,” and then compares the total unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare to this. And of course, the approximately 100 trillion dollar potential liability sounds like it dwarfs our entire national economy.
The problem, of course, is that this comparison is between ONE YEAR of the United States’s economic output (GDP), versus SEVENTY FIVE years of accumulated underfunding of the social safety net. Let’s put these into comparable units.
We could either (a) figure out how much the unfunded liabilities amount to, compared to the full 75 years of economic output, or (b) we can determine what the per-year amount of unfunded liability is compared to ONE year of economic output. Both give one the same answer, of course.
If we assume that today’s GDP represents an average, without systematic long-term growth or decline, and since the unfunded liability is being discussed in “today’s dollars,” then 75 years worth of today’s GDP is 1,050 trillion dollars. A little over 1 quadrillion dollars. The entire unfunded liability for the social safety net is thus 9.5% of our economic productivity over the next 75 years. Breaking that down on a per-year unfunded liability basis gives one about 1.33 trillion in unfunded liabilities per year. Again, about 9.5% of our economic productivity.
That’s a big drain on our economy, since we also spend a good chunk of our productivity on federal, state, and local spending.
But it’s not unthinkably large, nor catastrophic…
What does this mean for politics in America today?
1. We’re bullshitting ourselves about the problems, basically, and which ones need to be solved. We’re focusing on discretionary federal spending instead of entitlement program finances.
2. Nothing we do on the scale of the current discretionary federal budget will break the bank in the long term. Education spending and regulation of food safety are not leading the U.S. to the brink of disaster, and we need to call out the folks that claim it is.
3. We can fix the deficit and whittle down the U.S. federal debt within the framework of existing fiscal policy, without “inflating away” the debt. Our country has a robust enough economy that we have the resources.
4. Our efforts need to be focused FIRST on Medicare and health care costs in general, and figuring out a sustainable solution. SECOND, we should readjust Social Security funding and benefits policy to close the 75 year gap. The sooner we do it, the less painful the adjustments will need to be.
Americans aren’t accustomed to having the political dialogue in terms of “trillions” of dollars. So everything about this is scary, and easily borrowed by demagogues to push their own agendas.
It’s time we all got comfortable with these numbers, and realize that over the next two generations, our economy will produce over 1 QUADRILLION dollars in revenue — goods and services — and that we absolutely can handle the liabilities and issues we face.
If we want to.

Holy shit, Warsaw actually posted something. First time for everything-- I'll have to read through it in the morning again, it's late. But I did scan it and it looks like there's some actual ideas in there somewhere...

[straydog]

May 1, 2011 1:36:19 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

Apr 30, 2011 22:17:32 GMT -5 @straydog said:

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Why can't we just abolish all of the alphabet soup federal departments (DOEd, DOC, DEA, ATF, DOA, DOEn, DOT, EPA, etc.), and allow the states to take over these duties?

This would save us untold billions and billions (maybe even trillions?) of dollars. Then that savings could be used to shore up Medicare and Medicaid.

This would require statists to give up power and control- something they're not apt to do voluntarily.

States are going to have to take control back through court challenges, through legislation, and just plain old nullification.

And FWIW, California has been a leader in nullifying the federal drug laws with respect to marijuana in particular. We just need to expand that philosophy-- we know what's best in our state, thank you-- to other issues, and other states.

Well this Republican congress sure doesn't look like it's going to do it. We need a strong president who will lead to get these things done.

Either that, or governors who will take the feds to court over pulled highway or education funds if they don't follow dictates.

Too bad that Ron and Rand Paul Don't support Israel, because if they did, they could probably pull in alot more of the Evangelical vote.

[Deleted]

Apr 30, 2011 20:53:10 GMT -5 cme1201 said:

3. Globalize Medicare: Another protectionist barrier and detriment to free trade in the U.S. health care system is that seniors currently aren’t allowed to use their Medicare insurance system outside of the United States.

This is about the dumbest idea I have EVER heard of. Sure lets pay doctors in third world countries

Actually, its a growing trend. I'm not sure where i stand on it... but when educated doctors in modern facilities elsewhere in the world can offer services for a fraction of the price... some insurance companies are already allowing medical tourism...

[hello fromWarsaw]

That we are all of a sudden facing horrifying panic inducing debt from medicare/aid is simply another Pub lie, this time a big lie.
All the other lies, Gitmo, Iraq, jobs, Afghan (not Dem lies, promises blocked and horrible pub legacies), Muslim Kenyans, ACORN, death panels, gov't takeover, huge costs, lose your doctor, marxists, communists, drilling ban, no global warming, etc, etc.- no one has argued here.
There's too much proof available for any observers who aren't totally misled (about half Pub voters). ;D

[ty]

1: Eat Healthy

2: Exercise

3: Don't get Sick


No need for Medicare then.

[hello fromWarsaw]

Just watching some Reagan advisor on "This Week" saying they RAISED taxes in 1982 by 150 billion in today's dollars, saw they had cut taxes too much, because they had people who could spot reality...
Not now- real cultists working on lies...

[cme1201]

oped said: "some insurance companies are already allowing medical tourism... "

And this I can agree with, what I can't abide by is spending federal dollars at overseas clinic's, we already subsudize most of the world in one way or another, we can't afford the fraud that "could" be perputrated.

Private insurance can and more than likely does have a presence in the countries where they are allowing medical tourism, allowing them to at least control any portion of fraud that may take place.

[hello fromWarsaw]

OK, it's Stockman saying D.C. is now "theatre", based on BS, oh George Will is saying birthers are "cracked"- but that's HALF pub voters- that's 25 years of BS Newt talking points for ya!

[hello fromWarsaw]

If you have problems with health costs, go after health costs- implement health reform and add some more regulation- make 90-95% of health spending CARE related, cap salaries, get end of life counselling, drug price cuts, and some moderation on costs...let the French handle the drug research1! Moo haha ;D