ICYMI: Mayo Clinic Official Believes Expanding Medicare Will “Compound” Health Care Crisis
Posted by The Campaign on December 10, 2009 at 9:04 AM
In a Politico article by Jake Sherman, the executive director of the Mayo Clinic's Health Policy Center says the Medicare buy-in proposal will only intensify the healthcare system's existing cost problem.
Here are a few key excerpts:
"Plans to expand the Medicare system, an idea that seems to be in the crosshairs of some Senate Democrats, will 'compound' the nation’s health care crisis, according to the executive director of the Mayo Clinic’s Health Policy Center."
"Jeffery Korsmo, the executive director of the Minnesota-based policy arm of the famed hospital, said that expanding Medicare to people between the ages of 55 and 64 would 'accelerate the financial ruin of hospitals and doctors around the country.'”
For the full article, click here.
ICYMI: Premium Tax Increases Costs For Individuals, Families, Businesses, and Elderly
Posted by The Campaign on December 09, 2009 at 3:50 PM
Edmund F. Haislmaier, senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, explains how the health insurance premium tax will be passed on directly to consumers.
Here are a few key excerpts:
"Rather than actually reforming and reducing the costs of the world's most expensive health system, the Senate and House health care bills would drive America's health care costs even higher through a combination of massive new federal spending, taxation, and regulation."
"Congress should scrap the Senate health insurance premium tax, along with most of the rest of the House and Senate bills, and start over with a better, more focused design for genuine health reform."
"In reality, this 'fee' is structured as an insurance premium tax that will be passed directly on to consumers."
"...assessing a $6.7 billion annual fee on that current level of total premiums translates into an effective premium tax of 1.5 percent on every commercial health insurance policy."
"...over half of the tax will be paid by workers and dependents covered by employer group policies. Furthermore, because most large employers self-insure their health benefit plans, the group coverage portion of this premium tax will fall disproportionately on small and medium-size businesses."
"...through either Medicare Advantage or Medigap, seniors would pay approximately 17 percent of the new premium tax--the second largest share after small business."
For the full article, click here.
ICYMI: What People Are Saying about the Medicare Buy-In Proposal
Posted by The Campaign on December 09, 2009 at 9:41 AM
What They Are Saying About the Medicare Buy-in Proposal
"Lobbyists for providers and insurers immediately took aim at the buy-in proposal, saying that Medicare already doesn't pay enough. Adding more people would compel hospitals, doctors and others to jack up charges to private insurers and employers to make up the difference, they warned."
"The Federation of American Hospitals, in an e-mail alert to members, said the industry had already agreed to $155 billion in Medicare and Medicaid payment reductions over a decade and should not be asked to make additional financial concessions."
"The American Medical Association, whose members face a 21 percent pay cut next year unless Congress moves to reverse it, says doctors will oppose any expansion of Medicare until the program's financial outlook improves."
“'This would add millions of new people to a program everyone agrees is going broke,' says Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans…"
"...Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. said he’s not happy with the idea. 'We have the lowest Medicare reimbursement rates in the country in North Dakota, we’re at the bottom or second to the bottom. We’d have to straighten out the reimbursement rates before I’d want more buy-in to Medicare at current rates.'”
For the full article, click here.
BREAKING NEWS: NFIB Opposes Senate Reform Bill
Posted by The Campaign on December 08, 2009 at 7:10 PM
Tonight, National Federation of Independent Business released a letter in opposition to the Senate health care reform proposal. Here are some key excerpts from the letter:
As the Senate continues to debate the future of comprehensive healthcare reform, the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s leading small business association, is writing in opposition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590).
The most recent CBO study detailing the effect that H.R. 3590 will have on insurance premiums reinforces that, despite claims by its supporters, the bill will not deliver the widely-promised help to the small business community. Instead, CBO findings report that the bill will increase non-group premiums by 10 to 13 percent and result in, at best, a 2 percent decrease for small group coverage by 2016. These findings tell small business all it needs to know – that the current bill does not do enough to reduce costs for small business owners and their employees.
Despite the inclusion of insurance market reforms in the small-group and individual marketplaces, the savings that may materialize are too small for too few and the increase in premium costs are too great for too many. Those costs, along with greater government involvement, higher taxes and new mandates that are disproportionately targeted at small business and are being used to finance H.R. 3590, create a reality that is worse than the status quo for small business.
...the excessively tight age rating (3:1) in H.R. 3590 will increase more costs than it will decrease, and make coverage unaffordable for the very populations that are most beneficial to the insurance pool – the young and the healthy. Independent actuaries have analyzed the negative impact of such tight bands and have indicated that there will be devastating effects to the long-term viability of a pool without action to correct this rating imbalance.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is short on savings and long on costs, is the wrong reform, at the wrong time and will increase healthcare costs and the cost of doing business.
For the full letter click here.
ICYMI: Medicare – Two Big Problems: Higher Administrative Costs and Budget Deficits
Posted by The Campaign on December 08, 2009 at 5:02 PM
The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle looks at the recent proposal to potentially open up Medicare to people under the age of 65. She points out several problems with this proposal including the two below:
"Second problem: administration. One of the reasons for Medicare's much-vaunted administrative costs is that they don't need to do the ordinary sorts of customer service things that insurance companies do. They collect premiums by deducting them from your social security check. No one terminates their "policy" unless they die. You're talking about adding a substantial new bureaucracy to Medicare that will be expensive. By the time you're done, how much cheaper will this be than what that age group can currently buy on the open market?""Third problem: Budget deficits. Medicare is currently driving our budget off a cliff. Adding to the number of constituents that enjoy the service is not going to improve the fiscal picture, or the prospects for serious reform."
Full story can be read here.
MUST SEE TV: Video of AHIP's Karen Ignagni Delivering Speech at the Detroit Economic Club
Posted by The Campaign on December 08, 2009 at 4:00 PM
Last week, AHIP's Karen Ignagni delivered a speech at the Detroit Economic Club entitled "Health Care Reform: The Debate America Needs". In this speech she laid out the need to address increasing health care costs as a part of reform and how the current reform proposals fall short of doing this.
Click here for excerpts and full text of the speech.
Click here for the video of the speech from CSPAN's video library.
ICYMI: Regina Herzlinger, Harvard Business School Economist, Says GRP Will Damage Economy
Posted by The Campaign on December 08, 2009 at 12:59 PM
In a New York Daily News article, Regina Herzlinger of Harvard Business School argues that a government-run plan will exacerbate the health care spending problem.
Here are a few key excerpts:
"Public health insurance systems leave lingering financial scars too. To curry favor with current voters, politicians underprice public plans and devise exploitive financial schemes for picking up the tab. Politicians pass the bill to future generations. In 2008, Canada's Fraser Institute estimated the public system's unfunded liabilities at $364 billion. This sizable sum is dwarfed by Medicare's $38 trillion of unfunded liabilities, an amount nearly three times the GDP."
"U.S. Congress will inevitably underprice it [GRP] to win favor with present generations of voters, and pass the check to future generations. That will not only attract the newly subsidized uninsured but may also motivate employers to drop their health insurance and, instead, pay a penalty for not offering insurance."
"That combination of artificially low prices and large volume will mushroom U.S. unfunded liabilities."
"The public plan can further damage the country's future by repelling entrepreneurs who typically reduce costs and improve quality."
For the full article, click here.
ICYMI: Time Magazine's Karen Tumulty Writes "Economists Growing More Wary of Senate Health Bill"
Posted by The Campaign on December 08, 2009 at 11:51 AM
In a Time Magazine article, Karen Tumulty writes about a recent letter from almost every economist who wrote to the White House a few weeks ago plus a few others -- "among this group, Nobel prize winners, former presidents of the American Economic Association and former directors of the Congressional Budget Office." Tumulty writes that the authors of the letter do not believe the newly revised Senate bill will control costs.
"...it [economists' letter] carries an unmistakable warning: The legislative process is grinding away some of the most important promised reforms in the health care system--and the promise that this legislation will deliver better health care to Americans at lower cost."
"Specifically, it zeroes in on recent changes that have been made in the fine print of the legislation..."
For the full article, click here.
FACT CHECK: Current Reform Proposals and Costs
Posted by The Campaign on December 07, 2009 at 7:30 AM
There has been much discussion recently about the current reform proposals and whether they do enough to control the ever increasing cost of health care. Below find links to documents that outline the concerns raised by policy experts, editorial pages, opinion leaders and even members of Congress.
Policy Experts -- What They Are Saying:
Ken Thorpe, chairman of the health policy department at Emory University:
“We don’t need pilots. We have enough information. Let’s go ahead and get on with this.” (Time, Where Did Health Care Reform Go?, 12/03/09)
Editorials -- What They Are Saying:
The Buffalo News:
“But the report [Lewin Group report] also notes that the Senate plan, as well [as the House bill], fails the critical test of lowering the costs of health care. Or, as the foundation put it, ‘It does not bend the total health care cost curve downward as a percentage of the economy.’” (The Buffalo News, Editorial: Costs go Unabated, 11/19/09)
Opinion Leaders -- What They Are Saying:
Robert Samuelson: “Equally misleading…that the present proposals would slow the growth of overall national health spending. Outside studies disagree. Three studies (two by the consulting firm the Lewin Group for the Peterson Foundation and one by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a federal agency) conclude that various congressional plans would increase national health spending compared with the effect of no legislation.” (The Washington Post, Obamacare: Buy Now, Pay Later, 11/16/09) Sen. Susan Collins: “I don’t believe we need more pilot programs to show us that health care delivery reforms are necessary. I think people are much more upset over the cost of health care than the administration is acknowledging.’ Collins says the House measure includes ‘billions of dollars in new taxes and fees that will drive up the cost of health insurance premiums.’” (The New York Times, Health Care Reform Legislation Still an Uphill and Controversial Battle, 11/11/09) Rasmussen, 11/28/09 56% of Americans think that costs will go up under the current reform vs. 17% who think costs will go down. Members of Congress -- What They Are Saying:
POLL VAULT: New Las Vegas Review Journal Survey Shows Majority Opposed to Government-run Plan
Posted by The Campaign on December 06, 2009 at 6:46 AM
A new survey from the Las Vegas Review Journal shows that a majority of Nevadans are opposed to a government-run plan and a majority also believe their taxes will increase under the current reform proposals.
Here are the key findings:
55% oppose a government-run plan versus 30% who support
80% believe their taxes will go up vs. 11% who think taxes will not go up
For the full results and analysis click here.
