http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/30/three-ways-save-medicare/Across the country, Main Street Americans are speaking out against a GOP budget plan that would effectively end Medicare.
In taking aim at Medicare, these conservative members of Congress are claiming that they are actually “saving Medicare” from financial ruin and that there is no possible choice other than to privatize the program and throw seniors to the insurance industry. They say this to justify a plan that the Congressional Budget Office says would have the elderly spending the majority of their income on health care.
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ThinkProgress has assembled three different policy options that, if enacted, could help Medicare’s future financial issues and save the taxpayer billions of dollars:
1. Empower Medicare To Negotiate For Lower Drug Prices:
2. Allow Drug Reimportation From Canada:
3. Globalize Medicare:
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The primary reason these three common sense initiatives have not been enacted in the United States is because of deep opposition from the drug industry, for-profit hospitals, and other medical-industrial complex interest groups. Yet they all present simple and effective ways to lower costs and help shore up the finances of the Medicare program. If Ryan and other so-called reform advocates were serious about ensuring the fiscal solvency of the Medicare program and lowering health care costs for Americans, they would not remove these options from the debate.