President opposes plan to bolster SCHIP
The Bush administration reassured worried health insuranceexecutives Thursday that it strongly opposes efforts to cut theirpayments and use the savings to expand a separate insurance program forchildren.
Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said that cuttingmanaged care payments to insurers serving the elderly is part of abroader effort by some lawmakers to get the federal government to runhealth care. “There are those who want the government to do the market’s job,”Leavitt told members of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a tradegroup. “They want to steer Americans into a government run,one-size-fits-all plan.” Democratic lawmakers have listed the expansion of the StateChildren’s Health Insurance Program as their top health priority thisyear. Their goal: Increase enrollment in the program from about 6million children to about 12 million. The cost would be about $75billion over five years _ triple current funding. Many Democrats say some of the money necessary for an expansionshould come from the managed care plans that enroll Medicarebeneficiaries. Leavitt said the Democrats also wanted to expand theprogram to middle-income adults.
Read more in the Houston Chronicle.
Ed: How well is the market doing its job in the Medicare Advantage arena? Well, a recent study of MA plans showed that the cost to the government per beneficiary substantially exceed the cost per beneficiary enrolled in traditional Medicare. Hmmm. ….