Obama's 'Support' of Poor and Minority Seniors

Medicare Advantage (MA) is an alternative health coverage vehicle created for seniors as part of the Bush administration's market-based Medicare reforms. These reforms, collectively known as the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, established a system in which private health care plans compete with one another to provide Medicare and drug coverage to seniors.

This competition was intended to put downward pressure on health care costs and did just that. As early as 2007, the Washington Post was forced to admit that

"the new Medicare drug benefit appears to be slowing the growth in national spending on prescription medicines because the drug plans are negotiating lower prices with drug companies."

The Democrats have, predictably, been gunning for Medicare Advantage since they retook Congress in 2006. They see MA, with its emphasis on the free market and patient choice, as a threat to their plans for a government-run health care system. Thus, shortly after returning to power, they tried to use expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program as a pretext for killing the program.

The public was told that we had to choose between "the kids" and the insurance companies. When that fraud failed to produce results, they hit upon the more efficacious strategy of attaching a physician payment increase to a bill that would cut funding for Medicare Advantage. This allowed the Dems to co-opt the AMA, with whose help they successfully pushed through modest reductions in the program.

An enthusiastic participant in this travesty was the Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. And, now that the voters have put him in the White House, Obama plans to deliver the coup de gras to MA... [snip]

So, Medicare Advantage has to go, regardless of the harm done to low-income and minority seniors. The White House Budget Director has strict orders to pull the plug.

If low-income seniors must pay higher Medicare deductibles, that's the breaks. If they have fewer health benefits, oh well. If rural seniors must watch helplessly as their access to primary care disappears, c'est la vie.

They'll just have to face the fact that "change has come."

['Private', 'competition' and 'choice': three things socialistic governments cannot abide.]

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