Medicare Asks U.S. Elderly to Pay 11% More Toward Medical Bills

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<mk2967

Tue, 2 May 2006 23:41:10 -0700 (PDT)

[DitzisDumpster] Medicare Asks U.S. Elderly to Pay 11% More

Toward Medical Bills

 

 

 

(This seems to be just another one of those efforts by the govt. to make any

social services either to be, one too costly to use, or secondly to transfer

wealth from taxpayers to big business via the govt.)

 

 

 

 

http://tinyurl.com/ltzw6

 

Medicare Asks U.S. Elderly to Pay 11% More Toward Medical Bills

 

May 2 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Medicare plan will ask elderly people to

pay 11 percent more in health-insurance premiums for doctors' visits

next year, the program's trustees said in a report released yesterday.

Medicare intends to charge a monthly premium of $98.20 in 2007, up

from $88.50 this year, the trustees said. The premium has more than

doubled from the $45.50 charged in 2000. The Senate Democrats

yesterday said they want to peg the premium increases to the Consumer

Price Index, a measure used to track economic growth, to slow rate hikes.

 

``Medicare premium increases are unaffordable for many seniors as they

struggle to keep up with the high cost of prescription drugs, record

gas prices and their daily expenses,'' said Michigan's Debbie

Stabenow, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee. The committee

oversees Medicare.

 

Medicare officials are trying to total curb total program costs, which

are forecast to more than double to $817 billion in 2015. The program

cost $336.4 billion last year in expense for services ranging from

nursing-home care to a drug subsidy.

 

The trustees' report also found that Medicare would exhaust a trust

fund for hospital bills by 2018, two years earlier than forecast last

year. Medicare serves about 43 million people, including 35.8 million

who are 65 or older. Medicare also pays for health care for people

with disabilities, including severe mental illness and kidney disease.

Better Results

 

Medicare intends to demand better results in the future for the care

it pays for, an approach that will help patients and save money, the

program's chief, Mark McClellan yesterday said at a speech at the

American Hospital Association's annual meeting in Washington.

Medicare already has a test program that gives bonuses to hospitals

that consistently followed good procedures, such as giving antibiotics

before surgery to reduce infection risk. Medicare also is seeking to

give consumers more information about the costs and quality of care at

hospitals, turning them into better shoppers, he said.

 

``We have to start now building on the progress we have already made

to make Medicare sustainable,'' McClellan told reporters after his

speech. ``The best way to do that is to pay for the kind of care that

we want, and not just paying more for more services and complications.''

 

The Medicare trustees' report should push Congress to enact laws that

reward the best medical care and make it easier for consumers to

compare hospitals, said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles

Grassley.

 

``The trustees report makes clear that we should take steps sooner

rather than later on promising health care initiatives such as pay for

performance and transparency measures that both bring down costs and

improve the program,'' Grassley said in a statement yesterday.

Congress and Medicare will face opposition from trade groups to any

efforts to curb spending, said John Rother, director of policy for the

largest U.S. lobbying group for older Americans, Washington-based AARP.

 

``Every dollar in health care that we spend is somebody's income and

they typically resist efforts to lower that,'' Rother said in an

interview yesterday. ``Ultimately, this is a question of political will.''

 

Congress has attempted to curb spending in the past year with measures

such as not increasing payments for agencies providing home health

services. Medicare in January proposed lowering payments to hospitals

that care for the sickest patients, such as those who need to be

slowly weaned from mechanical ventilators.

The proposal might cut funding by as much as 15 percent, said the

Stoughton, Massachusetts-based National Association of Long Term

Hospitals in a March 13 letter to McClellan.

 

Medicare always get comments from ``interested stakeholders'' when it

issues proposals to change how it pays for medical services, McClellan

said. Medicare reviewed comments submitted on the long-term hospitals'

proposal and has made changes to the final rule, which it will release

``very soon,'' McClellan said. He didn't comment further on what

changes were made.

 

``Our underlying concerns about post-acute services remain,''

McClellan said on a conference call with reporters about the Medicare

trustees report. ``What we are doing today is paying different amounts

based on where a patient happens to go.''

 

Medicare is studying how best to assess what services people need, an

attempt to ``get the right patient to the right place for the right

services,'' McClellan said. Skilled-nursing centers offer similar

services to long-term acute care hospitals, such as helping in cases

where patients cannot easily return to unaided breathing after using a

ventilator.

 

To contact the reporter on this story: Kerry Young in Washington

kdooley

 

Last Updated: May 2, 2006 04:52 EDT