Obama Proposes Eliminating Medicare Advantage, Ousting 9 Million Seniors from

[Guest guest]

Obama Proposes Eliminating Medicare Advantage, Ousting 9 Million Seniors from

Their Health Plans

Posted by Michael F. Cannon

 

On This Week with George Stephanopolous, president-elect Barack Obama proposed

eliminating the ENTIRE Medicare Advantage program:

 

We've got to eliminate programs that don't work, and I'll give you an example in

the health care area. We are spending a lot of money subsidizing the insurance

companies around something called Medicare Advantage, a program that gives them

subsidies to accept Medicare recipients but doesn't necessarily make people on

Medicare healthier.

 

And if we eliminate that and other programs, we can potentially save $200

billion out of the health care system that we're currently spending, and take

that money and use it in ways that are actually going to make people healthier

and improve quality. So what our challenge is going to be is identifying what

works and putting more money into that, eliminating things that don't work, and

making things that we have more efficient.

 

Medicare Advantage allows seniors to choose a private health plan rather than

get their health coverage from the traditional Medicare program. The Left has

complained Medicare Advantage costs taxpayers more than if those seniors

remained in the traditional Medicare program. (I agree, though the reason is

not because government is more efficient than private insurance.) The Left has

long dreamt of eliminating Medicare Advantage, in part because it poses a threat

to their plans for a completely government-run, single-payer health care system.

Yet the Left has had to settle for attacking and attempting to eliminate the

" overpayments " that Medicare Advantage plans receive. Of course, one can

eliminate Medicare Advantage stealthily by reducing payments to private plans

until none will participate.

 

For Obama to suggest eliminating Medicare Advantage outright, however, is

extraordinary. First, Obama made a campaign promise that he will let Americans

keep their current health insurance. Eliminating Medicare Advantage would force

9 million seniors out of their current health plans and back into traditional

Medicare. Second, a man who wants to reform America's health care sector ought

not begin the effort by proposing to take something away from seniors, America's

largest and most politically active voting block. Maybe the Obama folks haven't

learned the lessons of the Clinton health care battle.

 

Eliminating Medicare Advantage would be bad for non-seniors, too, because it

would block innovations that make medicine better, cheaper, and safer. The main

reason that the U.S. health care sector fails to coordinate care, fails to

provide patients with electronic medical records, and fails to prevent medical

errors is that whenever providers try to do those things, the traditional

Medicare program's change-resistant payment system punishes them for doing so.

(Universal coverage kills.) Medicare Advantage plans use different financial

incentives that actually encourage coordination, EMRs, and error reduction.

What a novel thought…

 

I thought Obama's remarks were a misprint when I first read them. But then I

saw the video.

 

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/01/12/obama-proposes-eliminating-medicare-ad\

vantage-ousting-9-million-seniors-from-their-health-plans/