Medicare Rights Joins Congressional Briefing on Medicare Cost Sharing
Earlier this week, Joe Baker, president of the Medicare Rights Center, participated in a Congressional briefing sponsored by the Alliance for Health Reform and the Kaiser Family Foundation on proposals to restructure Medicare cost sharing. The panel discussed multiple proposals to streamline the Medicare benefit structure, including:
•combining the Medicare Part A and Part B deductibles;
•introducing copayments or coinsurance for specific services;
•prohibiting or limiting “first-dollar” supplemental coverage;
•adding an out-of-pocket spending cap to Original Medicare; and/or
•further income-relating Medicare deductibles, premiums or out-of-pocket caps.
The message was simple—pursued for the purposes of reducing the deficit or saving costs, efforts to redesign or simplify Medicare cost sharing would shift costs to most people with Medicare. Mr. Baker spoke about the known risks of increasing health care cost sharing, including decades of research demonstrating that added out-of-pocket costs cause people to forgo both needed and unneeded care.
In short, imposing financial hardship on those who cannot endure added costs would leave many people with Medicare with no choice but to self-ration health care. It would put the health and economic security of older adults and people with disabilities at risk—risk that is most pronounced for people with low, fixed incomes and those with high and persistent health care needs.
Read the briefing summary.
http://www.allhealth.org/briefing_detail.asp?bi=295
Watch the briefing on C-SPAN.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/CostRe
Read Medicare Rights’ press release.
http://medicarerights.org/newsroom/pressreleases/2013_21.html?utm_source=Medicare-Watch-email&utm_medium=e-mail&utm_term=mcw&utm_content=mcw&utm_campaign=MCW+7.25.13
