Please Select AutoHealthLifeBusiness

Senator Graham: Medicare Gone In 5 years; 36 Trillion Under Funded.

By Cathy Wilson Posted in Health Insurance News

It is no secret that Medicare has been seriously under funded in recent years and the deficit hole just keeps getting bigger. So where will Medicare be when we start cutting its budget to fund a public option? There’s no simple answer to that. The government simply does not have the funds to pay for a public option health care pln unless we rob another program of funds and it looks like Medicare is the target.

Will The Government Raise Taxes

That’s one of the biggest issues right now. Will the President decide to raise taxes to pay for the new programs or to delete programs like Medicare to fund such programs. It’s bad enough that the under forty crowd is paying for services we will never use (Social Security, Medicare), will we make our children pay for a broken program? Well, it’s not all doom and gloom. If the government is serious about health care reform then change is possible without accruing major debt for future generations.

Complete Health Care Overhaul

Real change won’t happen until the big picture is changed. Health care costs are completely unregulated from hospital to hospital and doctor to doctor. What one physician charges for a check up could be completely different than what another doctor charges. Managed care plans, like HMO and PPO, regulate it a little by contracting to pay the doctors a certain amount for services but the consumer will have to pay the rest of the cost at the other end, in premiums.

Another issue is the price of diagnostic services. One hospital might charge $200 for a CT scan while another hospital charges $400 for the same scan. In general the cost is a little ridiculous and changes each fiscal year. If the hospitals are losing money or not making enough then they pass on the deficit to the patients and their insurance companies.

Related posts:

1. What Is Single-Payer Health Insurance?
2. Healthcare Insurance Bill: 14 Yrs Of Taxes To Pay 10 Yrs Of Insurance
3. Mayo Clinic In Scottsdale, AZ No Longer Accepting Medicare Patients?
4. Will Dem’s And AMA Suceed In Cutting $247B Off Medicare?
5. Health Care Reform: Goodbye To Doctor-Patient Relationships?