The Obama health care effort does not address health care costs in a fundamental way. Yes, there are numerous new programs under development for Medicare to better deliver more cost – efficient health care, but they are years away, unproven and even further away from impacting the private sector. The new panel set up under the law to recommend cost cutting features should Medicare run over budget has it hands tied as to what it can recommend. As progressive politicians were touting the expansion of coverage and the elimination of underwriting rules contained within PPACA, they forgot the reality of health care costs and paid only lip service to the most important issue. Now two bipartisan commissions have focused on the cost of Medicare and Medicaid basically saying that if we don’t fix these programs we don’t fix the deficit.
This editorial in the New York Times summarizes the difficulty of the task ahead and the consequences of just about any action. It is too bad the Congress did not focus on these issues in its rush to expand Medicare benefits and Medicaid coverage in the process shifting costs to the private sector and to the states.
Read this editorial carefully, read between the lines and what you will find the reality of higher health care costs, higher premiums, more out-of-pocket costs and eventually less freedom of choice for all but the lowest income Americans. All this is coming make no mistake and in the process we will have a two tier health care system, one for those who rely on government programs and one for those who can pay and also afford supplemental coverage.
Related Articles
- Editorial: Health Care and the Deficit (nytimes.com)
- Cutting Health-Care Costs by Putting Doctors on a Budget (time.com)
- Expanding Medicaid: Nope, Still Not a Good Idea (reason.com)
- Deficit Panel Tackles Health Care Costs (abcnews.go.com)
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