KFF rounds up editorials on Bush Medicare “reform”
Several newspapers recently published editorials and an opinion piece on a Medicare proposal recently announced by the Bush administration. Summaries appear below.
- Daytona Beach News-Journal:A “rich nation should care for its elderly in return for their lifetimeof productivity for the country,” but, “as the tax structure andMedicare stand today, the program may become unaffordable,” accordingto a News-Journal editorial. The editorial states,”Keeping things as they are won’t work,” but “drastic changes aren’tnecessary, either.” According to the editorial, a “combination ofmodest tax increases and adjustments within the programs can assuresolvency far into the future.” The editorial concludes, “Theadministration’s overarching goal is to privatize the program, not tomake it permanently solvent as one of the more successful governmentprograms of the last 40 years,” and, as “Medicare beneficiaries haveevery reason to back fair Medicare reform,” they “also have everyreason to doubt that this administration can be trusted to deliver”(Daytona Beach News-Journal, 2/22).
- New York Times:The Bush administration “has just made several proposals — somesensible, some not — to reform Medicare financing and spending,” butthe “exercise is seriously hobbled by an ill-advised 2003 law thatprevents consideration of some of the best and fairest ways to beginfixing Medicare,” according to a Times editorial. Becauseof the way the law is structured, the editorial states, “Congress can’tbolster Medicare with money generated by closing corporate taxloopholes or letting the president’s tax cuts for the wealthy expire”because those measures would increase the amount of general fundsupport for the program and push it “over the arbitrary 45% cap.” Theeditorial continues, “The worst proposals, a slew of provisions torestrain medical malpractice awards, look mostly like a jab at thetrial lawyers who support the Democratic Party” and are “not apt tosave the program much money.” In addition, the “administration has madeno effort to reduce the lavish and unjustified subsidies granted to theprivate health plans that participate in Medicare,” and theirelimination “could save Medicare far more general revenue money thanreducing drug-program subsidies would,” according to the editorial. Theeditorial concludes, “Congress needs to focus on ways to restrain therelentless rise in health care costs that is bedeviling all healthinsurers, including Medicare,” and “Congress and the administrationneed to be able to consider all possible sources of revenue forMedicare — on their own sound and equitable merits” (New York Times, 2/25).
- John Goodman, Wall Street Journal:”Rarely in Washington does the president get to propose legislationthat Congress is required to fast track,” but such an “opportunityexists right now” with a proposal to address “the rising costs ofMedicare,” Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, writes in a Journalopinion piece. According to Goodman, reductions in Medicare physicianand hospital reimbursements “do not improve care and have not worked tocontain costs in the past.” In addition, although proposals to “promoteelectronic medical records, price and quality transparency, limits onmalpractice awards and means-testing” for Medicare prescription drugbenefit premiums are “commendable,” they are “far from adequate,”Goodman writes. Among other proposals, he writes, Medicare should”reward doctors and other health care providers who raise quality andlower costs” through “improving patient communication and access tocare and teaching patients how to be better managers of their owncare”; provide beneficiaries who have chronic diseases with “training,easier access to information, and the ability to purchase and usein-house monitors,” efforts that would help them “manage their own careas well as, or better than, conventional physician care and at lowercosts”; and revise the reimbursement system to remove the “manybarriers to innovations in using those treatments efficiently andeffectively” (Goodman, Wall Street Journal, 2/23).
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