As you may know, there are many special deals for specific Senators contained within the Senate Health Care Reform legislation. For example, there is a provisions to protect 800,000 senior in Florida from the cuts in Medicare Advantage plans.
The special deals are bad enough, but think a bit more about this. Why do the seniors in Florida need protection from this health care reform legislation? After all, we keep hearing that if you like what you have, you can keep it and we also hear premiums will not go up and all the rest.
The fact is, as we have been saying for months, that a lot will change and many Americans will see changes in their benefits and coverage. Seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans are likely to see major changes in cost and coverage.
To achieve true reform in health care, a lot has to change and many people will not like the changes, but we should tell people what reform really means. Today all we get is political rhetoric reinforcing all of the perceptions that are erroneous and contributing to out of control health care costs.
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QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
Thanks for your diligent coverage of this most important issue Dick. I understand that the Senate voted not to allow the citizens to review the details of the bill on the Web, as was origianally “promised” by the wolf pack in power. Given that, is there any source that has cracked the details of the changes coming in the Medicare Advantage plans? Our provider Providence Health Plan (a big HMO in Oregon/Washington)has no clue. Does anyone outside the closed doors of congress know? Because of the secrecy and pork barrel deals I personally will vote against any incumbent in office who voted for the bill in future elections. If they stay we can be assured that we are no longer a “represented” democracy.
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Phil
The best I can tell, the changes are simply lowering the payments Medicare makes to Medicare Advantage Plans. That means that each plan will decide how to cope with that. I suspect that means some combination of benefit reductions and premium increases. Either way the eleven million people in Part C of Medicare will likely lose the advantage they have.
One has to wonder why it takes 2,000 pages of legislation to correct this problem if that is what it really is.
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