MEDICARE: Take a NEW POLL online
MEDICARE: Take a ‘NEW POLL’
Over the past several days I have been receiving Emails from my very frustrated/angry older sister. She lives in New Mexico. The problem is with her doctor… well, to be more exact, the problem is with Medicare and how doctors in New Mexico (and Texas) are beginning to refuse to see patients who are on Medicare because Medicare has been “slow in making reimbursements” to the doctors. Not only are they slow, many physicians state Medicare payments have all but stopped.
The first email started off: “I called today to make an appt. for my annual checkup and was told that because Medicare is holding up payments to doctors they cannot make any appts. for seniors on Medicare. This is my regular dr. who takes Medicare”. A couple of days later that was followed up with: “I called back and she won't see MC patients because MC isn't paying its bills.” That’s what the doctors’ office told her. My sister then went on to tell me about her friends mother (who is 95 and who is on dialysis every couple of weeks). Medicare informed her doctor that they would no longer cover her dialysis due to her age (she’s too old). The family is picking up the tab now.
The reason I’m bringing this us is because in her Email to me this morning she wrote (very frustrated at the system): “The dr's nurse couldn't give me any more info other than she said they were have difficulty getting their MC reimbursements. I don't know what the heck senior here are going to do, there are already fewer and fewer dr's here that even take MC patients. We'll all end up in the emergency room at the University Hospital (that's like the County hospital).”
She is one of the many seniors on Medicare who are beginning to be squeezed out of health care access due to Medicare’s slow reaction to a growing crisis.
This mornings Modesto Bee (Opinion page A-11) was an article by Nicholas Kristof “http://www.modbee.com/opinion/national/story/941250.html“. The title of his opinion piece is: “Critics were wrong about Medicare, too”. His premise is that there is nothing wrong with Medicare and therefore we Americans should not be worried about Universal Health Care Reform. He cited several 1960’s era articles where people wrote of their concerns about Medicare and he tried to make the point that “all those predictions did not come true”… One of his big selling points was that because of Medicare, “America’s elderly are now cared for”... and then pitched the new Reforms are needed because: “our children are not”.
As the “Baby Boomer” generation ages and slips onto the Medicare rolls, how will Medicare keep up? If several states are already having problems with Medicare payments to physicians (under the current system), how are they going to be able to handle the millions and millions of new enrollees that are quickly approaching that mysterious “you’re 65… you must go on Medicare” dilemma? Ask local physicians how far Medicare is behind in making payments and you might be amazed that they are still seeing Medicare patients here in our neck of the woods.
Nicholas Kristof’s piece wraps up his argument with this question: “Why is it broadly accepted that the elderly should have universal health care, while it's immensely controversial to seek universal coverage for children? What's the difference — except that health care for children is far cheaper?” All the buzz words make it sound like the issue is “it’s for the children”, when in fact how better served will “the children” be if the government can’t even make Medicare work properly and timely now? My sister and her friends are already feeling the affects of government run health care… delays in medical care, delays in timely physician reimbursements, more worry about their future with the growing rolls on Medicare…
Kristof made his final pitch for universal health care with this line of guilt: “This year, the fate of health care will come down to a handful of members of Congress, including Sens. Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu. If they flinch and health reform fails, they'll be letting down their country at a crucial juncture. They'll be on the wrong side of history.” The only one’s I see who are letting down their country at a crucial juncture are those in Washington D.C. who are pushing for a massive increase of government programs and increased costs for the future generations of Americans and those who do not seem to have the ability to run the programs that are already in existence.
Medicare is falling apart! According to the governments own website (http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/index.html ) “Medicare's financial difficulties come sooner—and are much more severe—than those confronting Social Security. While both programs face demographic challenges, rapidly growing health care costs also affect Medicare. Underlying health care costs per enrollee are projected to rise faster than the earnings per worker on which payroll taxes and Social Security benefits are based. As a result, while Medicare's annual costs were 3.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2008, or about three quarters of Social Security's, they are projected to surpass Social Security expenditures in 2028 and reach 11.4 percent of GDP in 2083.” If American’s are putting in (currently) 3.2% of the GDP and it will rise to 11.4% in the future, how will the government be able to support another health program that will boost every American’s taxes by an additional 20% ti 30% on top of the projected 11.4%? That is over 30 percent tax on just health care in America, not to mention Federal Income tax increases, Sales tax, Property tax, State Income tax increases, and the myriad of other taxes we pay to support government programs?
All this while the current Medicare members are receiving less and less services and their doctors are saying they can’t keep treating Medicare patients while the government is squeezing reimbursement and increasing reporting requirement. At what point will having government insurance be a mute-point when doctors are not available to see the patient. I guess we’ll just have to have all physicians drafted into a new government program like the military, only this time it will be for as long as they want to practice medicine. They’ll work in government offices, for government clinics and government hospitals, with government pay scales, with total government control over medical care. Is that what we really want?
Remember this also (from the governments own report): “Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund is now 3.88 percent of taxable payroll, up from 3.54 percent projected in last year's report. The fund again fails our test of short-range financial adequacy, as projected annual assets drop below projected annual expenditures within 10 years—by 2012. The fund also continues to fail our long range test of close actuarial balance by a wide margin.” If the government was wrong in their projections then, what makes us so positive they are correct now!
Now for the poll. This is only for persons who are currently on Medicare or who will be on Medicare in the next twelve months. This poll is also only for physicians and health care workers who are effected by Medicare payments: The Poll questions:
Part A: Do you feel the current Medicare system is working as it was intended when signed into law July 30, 1965?
Part B: Is Medicare able to keep up with the growing enrollments?
Part C: (This is only for health service workers and physicians): Is the Medicare system reimbursing you in a timely manner?
http://www.actuary.org/pdf/medicare/trustees_may06.pdf : HI expenditures will exceed HI non-interest income this year. By 2018, when trust fund assets are projected to be depleted, tax revenues would cover only 80 percent of program costs, and this share will decrease rapidly thereafter. The trust fund depletion date is projected to arrive two years earlier than projected last year, due in part to slightly higher hospital costs in 2005 than previously estimated and some upward revisions in the short-range assumptions about utilization of HI services.
The value in today’s dollars of the HI deficit over the next 75 years is $11 trillion. Eliminating this deficit would require an immediate 121 percent increase in payroll taxes or an immediate 51 percent reduction in benefits, or some combination of the two. Delaying action would require more drastic tax increases or benefit reductions.”
- Bmoore3's blog
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Wow.
In this country, the richest country in the world, someone is too "old" to receive life saving medical care.
So, the family picks up the tab. What about the people who couldn't afford to pick up the tab? What would happen to her then.
Is this what we have become? A society that will say nothing to stop someone from dying. Just because they have reached a certain age, or their diagnosis wasn't trendy enough, or we don't like the color of their hair, we are going to sit back and let them die?
Well, if that's the case:
I think all brunette's should be cut off Medicare first. After all, brown hair is really drab and boring. Right?
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt
Leave it to you Linda
If you have to ask these silly questions, you pay far too much attention to sitting in front of your computer cutting & pasting and pretending to be a true Activist.
I would encourage you to take up a new cause, but you have no history of accomplishments to your credit.
Any when you start a blog and state that "you have better things to do" than help a fellow citizen in dire need (ficticous or not). Well, you just sunk yourself as an Activist.
But, back to the blog. It is serious. If you believe it or not.
And you cheapen it by making the joke about brunettes. 1. You are not a natural blond. I have seen your sorry excuse for what you call hair.
2. And most important. When we make it to the ripe old age and should at least get a crack at enjoying our lives, we all have the same hair color. Gray.
You can ask BMoore, he and I have had a difference of opinion as of late, but I have to give a man credit where credit is due.
This is a serious issue.
letmeactup
Is that it?
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt