Health Care Reform and the Skinning of Seniors [View All]

[Hannah Bell]

Seniors in the state where I live don’t have to wait for the finale of “what is expected to be a bruising, full-scale health care debate after Thanksgiving” to find out how their health care costs and benefits will be impacted. No, the low-income elderly in Massachusetts already got notices in the mail, weeks ago, from their Medicare Advantage insurance providers announcing big premium increases for 2010.

In anticipation of the long-promised cuts in government funding to Medicare Advantage plans under any new health insurance makeover bill, the Medicare Advantage providers have jumped the gun, and already passed their predicted losses in profits onto the backs of their fixed-income elderly “beneficiaries.” In my case, monthly premiums will go up 52 per cent. Services for which there previously were no charges---like physical therapy, for instance---will now require the same $20 co-pay paid to physicians. The cost of drugs will also see huge increases in the revised “formulary” which sets out restrictions on which drugs can be prescribed. Low-income elderly also got letters from “Prescription Advantage,” a program that helped them with the cost of drug coverage, that “Effective January 1, 2010, Prescription Advantage will no longer pay any portion of your Medicare Part D drug plan premium...”

...recent reminders that the now estimated $500 billion in Medicare “cost savings” will be taken out of the hide of poor seniors have been relegated to the final lines of press reports. For example: “To finance the expanded coverage Reid proposed higher taxes as well as cuts totaling hundreds of billions of dollars in projected Medicare payments...” (AP/Espo, November 21, ’09). And, “About half of the bill Reid unveiled Wednesday would be financed by curbs in projected Medicare spending...the biggest blow would fall on private Medicare plans.” (AP/Espo, November 19, ’09)...

http://www.counterpunch.org/cramer11242009.html