Texas Insider Report: DALLAS Texas The health care reform law will have a devastating impact on elderly & disabled Medicare enrollees if its provisions are not substantially changed says Thomas R. Saving former public trustee of Social Security & Medicare and John C. Goodman president & CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
The law creates a new mechanism to reduce the rate of increase in Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals. As a result Medicare payments will fall below Medicaid rates before the end of this decade and they will fall increasingly behind the rates paid by all other payers in succeeding decades.
Compounding these problems is the fact that the legislation will create a huge rationing problem system wide say Saving and Goodman.
- Although the law is expected to create as many as 34 million newly insured people all funds to create new health care providers were zeroed out of the bill.
Subsequently the administration has promised new funds to increase supply but they will be nowhere near the increase in demand.
Additionally Medicare spending cuts will create enormous financial stress for the nations hospitals.
- According to the actuarys office more than one in seven health care facilities will be unprofitable before the end of the decade.
- That number will climb to one in four by 2030 and to 40 percent by midcentury.
One way to think about these changes is to consider the reduction in spending on Medicare beneficiaries relative to the expected path prior to the legislation.
- Under the new health care law the average senior on Medicare will receive $2300 less in annual benefits within 10 years and $3844 less after 20 years.
- By midcentury average spending per beneficiary will be $9413 less than it would have been.
Instead of encouraging draconian price controls that will drive doctors and hospitals out of the market we should allow the market to respond to patient needs say Saving and Goodman.
Source: Thomas R. Saving & John C. Goodman
Obama Murdered Medicare Washington Times October 15 2010.
