theabcsofmedicare

Medicare Pays Double for Eye Drops

Yesterday Medicare bought twice as much medicine as I wanted and my doctor felt I needed. This is what is wrong with the American health care system in general and Medicare in particular and it could all be fixed very easily.

Far-Left-Wing USA TODAY Wrong about Public Part C Medicare Advantage

The far-left-wing USA TODAY newspaper claimed March 19 that it had done analysis that shows that the American Health Insurance Plan (AHIP¹) lobby is in error when it claims that the Obama administration wants to cut too deeply from the public Part C Medicare Advantage health plan program. Supposedly USA TODAY's analysis is based on the so-called non-partisan but actually left-wing MedPAC advisory group. 

In fact, in its March 2014 Annual Report to Congress, MedPAC's numbers tend to agree with AHIP.

Obama To Cut Part C Medicare Advantage 5X as Much as MedPAC Says Is Needed

Whose numbers do we believe in terms of how much money needs to be cut to achieve parity between capitation-fee Original Medicare and fee for service (FFS) Original Medicare?

Almost everything you read about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 as amended (see this example released on March 16) says

"In an effort to equalize higher (public Part C) Medicare Advantage funding levels with (FFS Original) Medicare levels, the (Obamacare) healthcare law plans to reduce funding to the (Part C) program by $200 billion in the next decade."

On the other hand, according to the left-wing Medicare Payment Advisory Commission's annual report released on March 14:

MedPAC: Blood-Sucking Private Insurance Companies Still Screwing Seniors on Medicare Out of Billions of Dollars

OK, so the headline is overdramatic. Maybe the crooked senior citizens and disabled people on public Part C Medicare Advantage health plans are only screwing all the honest people on Medicare out of a billion dollars or so. The problem is that we don't know and MedPAC¹ still can't tell us.

Waxman Parrots George Soros Lies about Public Part C Medicare Advantage

As I indicated here, the loony left academics are getting desperate about the current bi-partisan Congressional support for keeping public Part C Medicare Advantage health plan spending in parity with the spending in fee for service Medicare with its waste, fraud and abuse. The looney left's argument has long been:

"Just because coordinated-care, capited-fee plans eliminate fraud, waste and abuse and deliver much better health care for poor and minority communities, it should not be allowed to spend more to help those poor people¹."

The argument makes no sense, especially since the lefty-loon academics have no problem spending money on the poor for a hundred other goo goo programs of questionable value. So with the academics apparently failing to persuade even Demcorats, the foreign and dead billionairres -- whose consciences apparently cause them to give millions to far left wing causes -- came up with a new, absurd (but predictable when you think of it) argument:  

"The stock market thinks the cuts to your Medicare are OK so fuck you, you poor seniors."

Now the "seniors are stupid"  wing of the Democratic Party -- led by lobbyist-in-waiting Henry Waxman -- has followed in behind its intellectual and financial sponsors with a similar argument.

More Ignorant Part C Medicare Advantage Deception from George Soros Think Tank

Why don't these dead and/or foreign billionaires stop screwing around with and lying about my health insurance? The foreign fucks include George Soros and Pierre Omidyar. The dead ones include Carnegie, Ford, Hewlett, Rockefeller and Packard. Morris Cafritz and a few other people giving money to a far far left wing think tank called the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities (CBPP) seem to fall into both buckets.

Below in quotes is a typical example of the crap CBPP puts out about the public Part C Medicare Advantage health plan, to which I am one of about 15,000,000 subscribers in the United States. The lefty's idea is to ruin a program that caps my annual out of pocket (OOP) healthcare expenses and provides coordinated accountable care at a good price. You cannot get either of those benefits from Original looney-lefty Medicare. (I am not sure why the left wants to screw up my Part C plan. The Medicare-specific accountable-care idea based on a defined contribution was formalized during the Clinton presidency and disproportionately helps the poor and minorities.)

The lefties at CBPP absurdly write on March 13 that although:

• "AHIP and other interest groups argue that... a reduction in (public Part C Medicare health plan capitation-fee) payment rates will substantially increase costs to participants and reduce the choice of plans.......
• "...  but... enrollment has nonetheless reached record levels."

The two facts have nothing to do with each other. 

There is no doubt that the 2013 cuts by the Obama administration has had a major effect on 2014 plans. There are fewer such plans this year, premiums and co-payments are up, and OOP limits have increased $500 on average. The proposed additional 10%-plus cuts for 2015 can only mean more of the same.

So why would enrollment continue to increase? Because adding a public Part C Medicare Advantage health plan to your Original Medicare is still typically a better deal than adding a private Medigap supplement to your Original Medicare. I know these billionairres think we seniors are stupid but we can add. And we know when your suck-up lackeys are lying to us.

Academic Senior Haters Move Into High Gear to Attack Part C Medicare Advantage

Apparently sensing some momentum moving against them, the far-left-wing's hate for public Part C Medicare Advantage plan is spewing forth all over the place in the form of the typical lies and the less obvious deceptively misleading statements.

 

Seniors on Medicare: Add Jack Hoadley To Your "Do Not Read" List

Some far left wing loon named Jack Hoadley has an opinion up on the "Do Not Read" Health Affairs blog claiming the the CMS has a proposal "To Improve Competition among Medicare Part D Drug Plans." Only a far left propagandist that hates senior citizens would support a Part-D-related proposal that eliminates competition by claiming it is a “CMS Proposal to Improve Competition.”

 

U.S. Federal Government Privatizes Medicare

The current status of the privatization of "Original Medicare" was the subject of a House committee hearing the week of March 3.  If you are far-left-wing loon or depend only on far-left-wing loons for your information about Medicare, you might be surprised to know this.

But the fact that the U.S. government privatized Medicare is not breaking news. The U.S. federal government privatized Medicare in 1965 when the law enabling the first two parts of Medicare -- Part A for admitted hospital stays in an acute or rehabilitation hospital (the latter only if you stayed in the acute care hospital for three or more days as an admitted patient) and Part B for some other healthcare services but not most prescriptions -- was proposed by LBJ and passed in Congress on a bipartisan basis almost 50 years ago. 

I prefer to look at this issue from the opposite perspective. I believe -- despite what the left-wing loons tell you -- that all Parts of Medicare -- A, B, C and D -- are public. The fact that they are all also administered by private insurance companies under contract to the government is irrelevant.

Obama Continues War on Seniors, Slashing Part D Medicare Benefits

The Obama administration and the Democratic Party are so close to ending Part D Medicare as we know it that they can taste it. Part D -- helping 20% of seniors with low income to get free drugs and helping most middle-income seniors with almost all of their drug costs -- is the best thing that ever happened to Medicare in its 50 year history. Although it was orginally Bill Clinton's idea, it did not pass until the grunt work was done by George W. Bush. And that really pisses off the Democrats.