Anybody still think ObamaCare will mean better coverage for more people?
Official calculations show that Medicare has $34 trillion less than it needs to keep all its promises to seniors. Yet ObamaCare will take $500 billion out of Medicare over 10 years to cover 30 million uninsured Americans.
Basic arithmetic suggests that this would hasten the demise of the program. Not so, according to President Obama. He says he'll squeeze out savings by cutting reimbursement to providers. ObamaCare will create something called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, composed of 15 experts. Their job will be to hold down spending by identifying reimbursement cuts, and their recommendations will be binding on Congress. If this board recommends what many fear it will, Medicare's reimbursement rates will drop below Medicaid's, which will mean that doctors will turn away seniors like they do the poor. In effect, in addition to an early death option, ObamaCare offers seniors diminished access to quality care. If this is compassion, give me cruelty.
RyanCare is not perfect, but at least it won't rob Grandma Millie to buy Cousin Joe coverage. It will allow all those who are 55 or older right now to stay in the current Medicare program. But come 2022, everyone presently younger would get an average of $15,000 — the amount Medicare would spend per beneficiary — in “premium support” to use toward a health plan of his or her choice. Low-income and sick seniors could get up to another $8,000 or so.
This is hardly ungenerous. But liberals are still crying bloody murder. Why? Because RyanCare would raise the “voucher” amount annually based on general, not medical, inflation. And since medical inflation outpaces general inflation, with every passing year the voucher would buy less, and seniors would be on the hook for more.
But this misses the point even worse than Dwyane Wade missed the tying free throw for the Miami Heat Tuesday night. RyanCare wants to give seniors control over their Medicare dollars precisely to unleash their market power to curb medical inflation. It might not fully succeed, because it won't let seniors buy coverage from wherever they like. Rather, it will limit their options to expensive plans, with all kinds of unnecessary bells and whistles, on a federal exchange. Still, it will cut inflation somewhat. And the savings that result would go directly into seniors' pockets, not skimmed off to pay for someone else's coverage.
ObamaCare, she says, is "the worst thing that could happen to seniors in their old age." Inaction is the next worst thing, which makes RyanCare the least bad: "As a senior in the making, if those were my only options, I would ignore Democratic demaguguery and take RyanCare in a heartbeat. ObamaCare, however, I'd avoicd like the plague"
"The least bad thing" is not exactly ringing praise, but maybe it's the best we can expect from government these days.
