Ideas, Opinions, Genealogy, and Book Reviews
Republicans Have sponsored a bill that would raise your Medicare costs. With Democrats in the majority, the bill would probably not ever get out of committee. With a Republican majority, you will likely face higher costs.
What are Senators Mike Lee [R-UT] Cynthia Lummis [R-WY]. James Lankford [R-OK], and Marco Rubio [R-FL] thinking?
I do not understand what Republicans are thinking.
Recently President Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 which includes several provisions to reduce prescription drug costs for people with Medicare and also lower drug spending by the federal government. Sounds like a win-win; the people on Medicare save and so does the government.
Continue reading “I do not understand”
President Trump thinks we should negotiate drug prices for Medicare. At least that was his position a few months ago and I don’t think it has changed.
Continue reading “Negotiate drug prices for Medicare”
They clearly wanted no government interference in Medicare part D. I knew because an ad on a news website led me to http://www.nogovinterference.org/.
But I could not figure out what had them so upset. After all, Medicare part D is a government program so why shouldn’t the government be involved and how were they interfering or proposed to start interfering.
Continue reading “No government interference in Medicare part D”
I’ve been writing lately about an unjust increase in Medicare Part B premiums for a subset of those over 65.
I was glad to see that this was addressed in the 2 year budget deal recently worked out by Congress and the administration.
This is not what I considered the ideal solution but it is a reasonable compromise. Continue reading “Reasonable compromise on budget deal”
I have been writing here about the unfairness of the Medicare part B premium increase for 2016.
H.R. 3696: Medicare Premium Fairness Act of 2015 has been introduced in the House but is still in committee as of today and S. 2148: Protecting Medicare Beneficiaries Act of 2015 has been introduced in the Senate but is still in committee as of today. Continue reading “Medicare Premium Fairness Act of 2015”
I have written twice about this unfair increase in Medicare premiums for some of us (Fix unfair Medicare increase and Medicare heartburn- the uneven increase).
Now AARP has written about this too. Some Medicare Premiums Could Spike explains this in much more detail than I did and also brings up a point that I never considered.
But here is how it starts: Continue reading “Medicare premiums spike for some”
I wrote about the unfair medicare increase toward the end of last month. I didn’t think much would come of it.
But 2 bills to correct this injustice have been introduced in Congress. These bills would keep Part B premiums at their current rate for all Medicare beneficiaries in 2016.
Of course congress is kind of busy these days with the debt ceiling rapidly approaching and the need to fund the government for the year that began 10 days ago. But that is just because they chose not to do these things in a timely manner. But they don’t seem to be in too much of a rush to act on either.
So maybe they will find the time to fix this unfair medicare mess.
I’ve been following this issue and this is the clearest explanation I’ve seen so far: Surprise! Your Medicare Part B premiums may increase by 50 percent in 2016. This article explains the financial medicare heartburn induced in a portion of the population: Continue reading “Medicare heartburn- the uneven increase”
This is a review of Medicare For Dummies which was much better than expected. In fact, it was very good but I did have low expectations when I first saw the book.
Many years back my job involved computers and programming. I don’t remember the exact story so this will be a bit vague. For some reason I need to learn quickly about some commonly used program. I figured since I knew nothing about program X, most books or webpages about X would be way over my head.
So I figured I would start with the “Dummies” book and progress after I got the basics. It turn out badly. I didn’t really learn anything useful and felt insulted and frustrated in the process.
This book is much different. Continue reading “Medicare explained brilliantly”
I do not understand why Paul Ryan, Romney-Ryan ticket, and perhaps Republicans in general seem to believe that having health insurance on exchanges for Medicare will somehow bring down healthcare costs though the magic of the marketplace. But having health insurance on exchanges in Obamacare will not also drive down health care costs.
I hope this is one on many mysteries that will be explained in the next few days or maybe months.
No doubt Medicare has a problem. We are told the funds available are not enough to pay the benefits promised. So do we need to destroy Medicare (as it is) in order to save it?
Can we reduce costs without impacting benefits? You occasionally read about really big frauds being found. Do we need to do more about preventing those or at least minimizing damage? Private insurers seem less subject to this type of fraud. What is their secret? Can we make the medical system more efficient and less coslty.
If the American people think we should keep Medicare benefits, do we need to find a better funding mechanism? Obviously paying a small percentage of your salary while working and getting heath care benefits for life after 65 is not a viable model in itself. Do we want to supplement this from general revenues or add another dedicated tax. Increasing the taxes on gasoline consumption or adding a carbon tax seems appropriate. We need to decrease our dependence on oil and other carbon producing eneny sources so a tax seems logical to me.
Do we want to decrease benefits? That is the other possible solution. I don’t agree with Rep. Ryan’s plan but at least it has moved us a bit more toward a discussion on this.
There is a very interesting exchange of views about the implications of the tax compromise to delay the Bush tax hike or extend the Bush tax cuts, depending on your point of view.
The HealthBeatBlog hosts a nice discussion of the implications of this tax compromise for Medicare, Social Security and Health Care Reform. The link is to Part 1. So more is coming and probably soon.