Obamacare failing as expected....as predicted

[forced89]

I'm on Medicare. Very satisfied with availability of care and cost including Medicare Supplement and Plan D Prescription coverage. It runs smoothly. Problem is that the program is underfunded and money will have to come from somewhere to keep it going.

[mostpost]

Originally Posted by Clocker

To make things worse, Medicare is forbidden by US law to negotiate prices with the drug companies. But Medicaid and the VA are allowed to do so. So Medicare patients pay more for drugs unless they have supplemental insurance and their insurer negotiates directly for lower prices.

Exactly who passed that law? Part D was passed in 2003 by a Republican President and a Republican Congress. I am certain that you were and still are in favor of that provision. So stop acting so horrified.

[mostpost]

Originally Posted by HalvOnHorseracing

There have to be people here on Medicare. I can tell you in the circles I run in people seem to really like Medicare, and are spending ridiculously small amounts on premiums and co-pays. Is there anyone here who is on Medicare and thinks it is a really bad deal? I'm honestly asking.

I am on Medicare part A. When I became eligible at 65, I opted not to take Part B. Instead I continued with the FEHB plan though the United States Postal Service. Premiums for Part B were slightly lower than the Postal insurance but did not include prescription drug coverage. If you add Part D premiums they are considerably higher.

As for satisfaction, I am quite satisfied with the coverage I have.
As for premiums, I pay nothing now for Part A. (I paid for that throughout my working life. My monthly premium for the Post Office insurance is $173.34-USPS pays $462.30. I don't think that is unreasonable for a guy who is almost 75 and has some chronic health issues.

[Tom]

Originally Posted by rastajenk

Who coined the phrase "single payer?" A shill or a loonie?

Actually, what this mean is that the dems will put enough people on hand outs and destroy the economy bad enough that eventually, there will be only one man left working in the country......and HE is the single payer of everything.

How about those dems, their goal is total failure by everyone and they celebrate it.

[HalvOnHorseracing]

Originally Posted by chadk66

If medicare in itself was so great insurance companies wouldn't be selling medicare supplements

Only if by "great" you mean covering 100% of all costs. Medicare is an 80-20 program, meaning they cover 80% and you pay 20%. As I understand it, Part A is no cost for premiums - you've paid for that in your working career, and Part B costs either $104 or $121 a month depending on whether you are getting SS. I'm guessing you can't get insurance that cheaply on your own, or even anything close, unless you have an employer subsidy. The supplemental insurance might cost around $145 to cover 100% of what Medicare doesn't. So worst case sounds like $266 a month for 100% coverage. So if I was commenting, yeah, Medicare sounds pretty great compared to any alternative that doesn't involve an employer payer for insurance, which when you are retired really isn't an option.

[Clocker]

Originally Posted by mostpost

I am certain that you were and still are in favor of that provision. So stop acting so horrified.

I am certain that you and Al over-dosed on the Kool Aid at your little get-together and are still high on a celebration of left wing dogma.

How is it that you know so much about what I am in favor of or what horrifies me? What horrifies me is politicians trying to regulate the free market. And the only thing more horrific than a GOP Congress interfering in the free market is a Democratic Congress trying to impose their 'wisdom' on the citizens who pay their salaries.

As bad as that law is, it is a drop in the bucket compared to what the Dems did to take virtual control of the health insurance market with ObamaCare.

[chadk66]

Originally Posted by HalvOnHorseracing

Only if by "great" you mean covering 100% of all costs. Medicare is an 80-20 program, meaning they cover 80% and you pay 20%. As I understand it, Part A is no cost for premiums - you've paid for that in your working career, and Part B costs either $104 or $121 a month depending on whether you are getting SS. I'm guessing you can't get insurance that cheaply on your own, or even anything close, unless you have an employer subsidy. The supplemental insurance might cost around $145 to cover 100% of what Medicare doesn't. So worst case sounds like $266 a month for 100% coverage. So if I was commenting, yeah, Medicare sounds pretty great compared to any alternative that doesn't involve an employer payer for insurance, which when you are retired really isn't an option.

cheap is actually a ruse. most of us will have paid in an insane amount for medicare by the time we hit 65. So those on medicare don't just pay the $104 per month for part B. There are lots of strings attached to medicare also. So it's not just a simple 80/20 plan. One could fix some of the financial woe's of medicare quite easily. The biggest cost to medicare are unnecessary tests they force doctors to perform. Grandpa Joe comes in with an issue that Dr. John see's daily, he can't just say "yep Joe I know exactly what you have, here is a pill to cure it". Dr. has to run Joe through several tests to confirm what Dr. already knew the minute Joe opened his mouth. And the cost to dr's just to do the paper shuffle required by medicare is insane. That's why more and more dr's are not accepting medicare or medicare patients anymore. that number grows daily.

[HalvOnHorseracing]

Originally Posted by chadk66

cheap is actually a ruse. most of us will have paid in an insane amount for medicare by the time we hit 65. So those on medicare don't just pay the $104 per month for part B. There are lots of strings attached to medicare also. So it's not just a simple 80/20 plan. One could fix some of the financial woe's of medicare quite easily. The biggest cost to medicare are unnecessary tests they force doctors to perform. Grandpa Joe comes in with an issue that Dr. John see's daily, he can't just say "yep Joe I know exactly what you have, here is a pill to cure it". Dr. has to run Joe through several tests to confirm what Dr. already knew the minute Joe opened his mouth. And the cost to dr's just to do the paper shuffle required by medicare is insane. That's why more and more dr's are not accepting medicare or medicare patients anymore. that number grows daily.

I actually figured out what my lifetime contribution was to Medicare, but I'll use a couple of examples. There was a time when FICA and Medicare were combined as one deduction, but this year the Medicare amount of 1.45% is shown separately. Say you had a 40 year working career and you made a total of $2.8million - and that would put you in the top decile of all earners. If you paid the Medicare amount for the entire 40 years, you'd have paid about $40,000 total. Say you retire at 65 and live to age 80 you would essentially have paid $2,700 a year for the Part A insurance. One major surgery would cost you more than that without insurance. And the people I know paying for individual insurance are paying $2,700 for about two months of premiums. From that perspective, not so bad.

Let's say instead of a big earner, you were an average wage earner. Over the same 40 years, you would have earned maybe $1.2million. That means you would have paid a little under $17,000 in Medicare taxes, meaning your 15 years of being on Medicare would cost a little over $1,130 a YEAR.

I'm not sure how you came up with the insane amount, but most of us are not going to be in the 1% - most people are between the two examples I gave. As to the strings attached, given I am quite close to someone who is intimately familiar with Medicare, and while Docs and hospitals would be glad if it paid them more, I'm hearing the patients are covered for the procedures. As for the unnecessary testing, most of that is for two reasons - so hospitals and docs can bill for more than a patient visit and so the hospital can cover it's butt. But again, straight from the horse's mouth, most treatments do not require expensive confirmatory testing. Sure, if you think you've broken a bone you get an X-Ray. If you have a lump you get a biopsy. But as I said, a lot of what seem to be superfluous tests allow for greater billing, or because there are not electronic medical records systems that show repetitive tests. That is not on Medicare.

I also checked on the paper shuffle. Straight from the horse's mouth, all you send to Medicare is a claim form, exactly like you do for every other insurance company.

While you are correct that more docs are becoming non-participating providers, many of them will still accept Medicare patients because guess what - they get a higher reimbursement from Medicare than a participating provider.

I'm not telling you that Medicare is the greatest program in the history of programs. Just that most of the people who use it think it is a pretty good deal. And most of fraud has been weaned out of the program. There I are still improvements that could be made, and yes, long term funding is undoubtedly an issue, especially considering how little that insane lifetime amount really is if you live to the average age of your cohort. Frankly, if I had paid twice as much it would have been a good deal. And clearly the medical reimbursement part can only stretch so thin. But compared to what the people I know having to pay for private insurance are paying - $1,200 a month - Medicare is a great deal.

[forced89]

Like I said before I am happy with my combination of Medicare Part A, Part B, Supplement and Part D. I am happy with the level of care I get and what I pay for it but am concerned that Medicare is costing the Government (we the taxpayers) money.

In some markets a Medicare patient may have trouble finding a Doctor who takes new Medicare patients. For example when my Primary Care Doctor retired and I had to find a new one the first 4 Doctors I approached were not taking new Medicare patients. Fortunately I live in an area where there are a lot of Doctors and the Doctor behind the 5th door I knocked on accepted me as a new patient.

[reckless]

Originally Posted by mostpost

I am on Medicare part A. When I became eligible at 65, I opted not to take Part B. Instead I continued with the FEHB plan though the United States Postal Service. Premiums for Part B were slightly lower than the Postal insurance but did not include prescription drug coverage. If you add Part D premiums they are considerably higher.

As for satisfaction, I am quite satisfied with the coverage I have.
As for premiums, I pay nothing now for Part A. (I paid for that throughout my working life. My monthly premium for the Post Office insurance is $173.34-USPS pays $462.30. I don't think that is unreasonable for a guy who is almost 75 and has some chronic health issues.

Yes, such as defending the indefensible.

[Capper Al]

Originally Posted by Clocker

No, you have it exactly backwards. Health insurance should correlate to health care costs. ObamaCare does not, which is why it is a mess.

This is not the first round. ObamaCare premiums have been going up regularly for years.

How do you know it isn't? This is radical talk.

[davew]

Well, at least it is AFFORDABLE, says so in the name

and one of Pelosi's greatest accomplishments
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/1...amacare-099102

[Sinner369]

Obviously, being from Canada I don't know the details of the Affordable Care act..............but universal health care works all over the world (including Canada).........the US with ten times the population should work too...........what are the problems and why?

[Clocker]

Originally Posted by Sinner369

Obviously, being from Canada I don't know the details of the Affordable Care act..............but universal health care works all over the world (including Canada).........the US with ten times the population should work too...........what are the problems and why?

Because single payer health care greatly limits choice. Americans have long had choices and don't want to give them up. There are ways to provide health care to people who don't have it without taking away choices for people who don't want the one size fits all version.

A lot of us still feel capable of making our own decisions about what we want and need without the government telling us that we don't know what is good for us.

[JustRalph]

Originally Posted by Sinner369

Obviously, being from Canada I don't know the details of the Affordable Care act..............but universal health care works all over the world (including Canada).........the US with ten times the population should work too...........what are the problems and why?

Works? Playoffs? Playoffs?

I suggest you use the search engine "universal health Canada"