Health Care Reform Articles-June 5, 2012

Tell Americans the real cost of Medicare

By Bryan R. Lawrence, Special to the BDN

Posted June 03, 2012, at 4:09 p.m.

Medicare may be the most sacred government program in the United States — even 76 percent of tea-party supporters oppose cuts to it, a McClatchy-Marist poll found in November. Given its central role in our fiscal challenges, it makes sense to examine why this program is so popular.

There are two key factors.

First, retired Americans receive high-quality care but have virtually no idea what their Medicare benefits cost. The George W. Bush administration required Medicare to begin providing such information, but it is presented in a way that makes it hard to understand and is read only by people who request it. (The Medicare website even cautions that the “files are large so printing them is not recommended.”) While not every retiree takes the time to study the cost, almost all rely on the benefits.

Second, every working American has Medicare taxes deducted from each paycheck and has been told that the money is paid into a trust fund for his or her future benefits. It’s not surprising that Americans feel proprietary about Medicare — they believe that they have spent their working lives paying for their future benefits.

But those Medicare taxes, and interest on the program’s small trust fund, cover just 38 percent of the annual cost of the program’s benefits. Premiums paid by beneficiaries cover an additional 12 percent, but fully half of the program’s $549 billion cost last year was funded by federal income taxes on working Americans.

Put another way, Medicare is a transfer of wealth from younger to older Americans.

http://bangordailynews.com/2012/06/03/opinion/tell-americans-the-real-cost-of-medicare/print/

Looking ahead at options if health law falls

Justices’ decision could challenge legislators

By Tracy Jan

WASHINGTON - As the country awaits this month’s Supreme Court decision on the fate of President Obama’s sweeping health reform law, sharp negative questioning by justices during oral arguments has supporters and opponents girding for the possibility that the entire bill could be overturned.

That means the elimination - along with the controversial mandate that most people purchase health insurance - of popular provisions allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26, making prescription drugs for seniors more affordable, and requiring insurers to cover those with pre-existing medical conditions without charging them more.

Even if the court were to strike just the individual mandate and keep the rest of the law intact, some health care advocates, insurers, and lawmakers fear that these consumer protections would be unable to stand on their own.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/06/04/supporters-opponents-obama-health-law-prepare-for-possible-supreme-court-rejection/6XG6O2VxopFvJdfaRA7gyO/story.html

Questions to ponder when dialysis clinics are for sale

By Rosemary Gibson, Special to the BDN

Posted June 04, 2012, at 3:56 p.m.

The news that Eastern Maine Medical Center plans to sell its three outpatient dialysis clinics to one of the country’s largest for-profit dialysis companies (April 24 BDN) raises issues that will affect the health and well-being of Mainers.

Here are five questions all should ponder about what it means when ownership status changes from nonprofit to for-profit.

First, should the money that comes to Maine for dialysis services leave Maine? When health care facilities are locally owned, Medicare reimburses them for the cost of providing care to people in their communities. The money that comes to Maine stays in Maine.

When multinational corporations own clinics, some of that money leaves the community. Where does it go? It goes to corporate headquarters and is used to pay company stockholders. It pays the salaries of company executives who are working to build more business, not benefit the people of Maine. The salaries are likely to be much higher than the salaries most Mainers receive. In today’s economy, should the money that comes to Maine stay in Maine and benefit local businesses?

http://bangordailynews.com/2012/06/04/opinion/contributors/questions-to-ponder-when-dialysis-clinics-are-for-sale/print/

It would not be the end of health reform, just a chance to get it right

By Rose Ann DeMoro
The Huffington Post, June 4, 2012
If President Obama is now confiding to Democratic donors that he may have to "revisit" health care in a second term if the Supreme Court throws out his first attempt, as Bloomberg News reported June 1, maybe this time we can get it right.
Instead of trying to dress up our broken private insurance-based system, or resuscitating elements of a convoluted plan the court may overturn, it's time to try something different.
Fortunately, we have a well established, uniquely American model in place, one that meets the legal test. A program that already takes care of the 40 million Americans over 65. That has the added benefits of being universal in coverage and far more cost efficient than our present system.
It's called Medicare. And it's been working well for nearly 50 years, and remains wildly popular, even among those hate "Obamacare."
How do we fix our health care system? Easy, and we don't need 2,700 pages either. Just open up Medicare to cover everyone, regardless of age.
It's a step we should take, no matter how the court rules.
http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2012/june/it-would-not-be-the-end-of-health-reform-just-a-chance-to-get-it-right

Should Obama’s Health Care Be Opposed?

By Marcia Angell, M.D.
The New York Review of Books, June 7, 2012

I admire Ronald Dworkin greatly, and I certainly defer to him on most legal matters, so it is with some reluctance that I take issue with his essay “Why the Mandate Is Constitutional: The Real Argument” [NYR, May 10]. I have several objections, most of which concern not the legal matters, but his more general comments about the virtues of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Dworkin exaggerates the benefits of the ACA. For example, he writes that “the act provides, among other benefits, health care insurance for the 16 percent of citizens who now lack it….” It does not. Of the 50 million uninsured Americans at the time the ACA was enacted, the law was designed to cover just 32 million, leaving 18 million still uninsured. Half of the 32 million would gain coverage simply by virtue of expanding Medicaid eligibility—something that did not require the whole apparatus of the ACA. So the mandate that requires uninsured people to buy private insurance, which is at the heart of the Supreme Court challenge, would cover only 16 million people, a mere 5 percent of the population.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2012/june/should-obama’s-health-care-be-opposed

TUE JUN 05, 2012 AT 08:34 AM PDT

Unscrubbed e-mail cache shows Mitt Romney's extensive work on health care reform

It's no surprise to anyone that Gov. Mitt Romney had a whole different attitude about health care coverage than presidential candidate Mitt Romney. It is, however much he wants to run from it, part of his Massachusetts legacy. But because the governor had his crew go on a scrubbing mission when he left office by buying hard drives from state-owned computers, it's been guesswork getting all the details of his support for a program that looks, in many ways, like the "ObamaCare" he now trashes at every opportunity.

However, Mark Maremont at The Wall Street Journal went searching anyway with a public records request and turned up some e-mails the governor's team missed:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/05/1097506/-Mitt-Romney