If you can quietly pivot to "Canadian Healthcare" (a euphemism for killing government patients in the Soviet style), you can fix the government's budget problem and spend the money on some other set of stupid things.
It's certainly easier to have CMS pass new regs then get a bill through congress. But both insurers and doctors are the recipients of that money and they are powerful lobbyists to keep the Medicare gravy train rolling. They tried to reduce trend on Medicare Advantage a year ago and they started running ads that CMS was secretly cutting Medicare.
Per capita medicare spending is in the short term going to be dominated by baby boomers retiring. Most Medicare spend comes at end of life so having more 65 year olds will temporarily lower per capita spend, but it can always go back up as they age.
Also, Medicare is subsidized by commercial insurance so eventually Medicare pay rates will have to rise as there are more Medicare members and fewer commercial payers.
Yeah, I hate olds and while I'm ideologically committed to entitlement reform I'm pragmatically cognizant of the fact that any savings won't go to young families but get pissed away on bullshit even less useful then entitlements. At least now my mother can support herself with SS and Medicare rather then me having to do it.
Next year the Democrats will take the House and hold the Senate so that during BidenтАЩs second term it is not unreasonable to expect IRAs and other retirement savings vehicles to be raided to fund reparations and other progressive priorities. We probably can also expect the notion of equity to be introduced to Social Security and Medicare with race-based equity benefit structures.
It's not politically feasible to pass legislation that does this, but it is feasible to weasel around with medical treatment protocols and the regulation of how much is paid for what procedures. The propaganda tack can be seen in this NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/05/upshot/medicare-budget-threat-receded.html
If you can quietly pivot to "Canadian Healthcare" (a euphemism for killing government patients in the Soviet style), you can fix the government's budget problem and spend the money on some other set of stupid things.
Sort of.
It's certainly easier to have CMS pass new regs then get a bill through congress. But both insurers and doctors are the recipients of that money and they are powerful lobbyists to keep the Medicare gravy train rolling. They tried to reduce trend on Medicare Advantage a year ago and they started running ads that CMS was secretly cutting Medicare.
Per capita medicare spending is in the short term going to be dominated by baby boomers retiring. Most Medicare spend comes at end of life so having more 65 year olds will temporarily lower per capita spend, but it can always go back up as they age.
Also, Medicare is subsidized by commercial insurance so eventually Medicare pay rates will have to rise as there are more Medicare members and fewer commercial payers.
Yeah, I hate olds and while I'm ideologically committed to entitlement reform I'm pragmatically cognizant of the fact that any savings won't go to young families but get pissed away on bullshit even less useful then entitlements. At least now my mother can support herself with SS and Medicare rather then me having to do it.
Next year the Democrats will take the House and hold the Senate so that during BidenтАЩs second term it is not unreasonable to expect IRAs and other retirement savings vehicles to be raided to fund reparations and other progressive priorities. We probably can also expect the notion of equity to be introduced to Social Security and Medicare with race-based equity benefit structures.
Lordy, i hope not!