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MEDICARE IS FORTY YEARS OLDAmerica’s Own Forty Year War By Eleanor Anne Canter The Medicare system, designed in the 1960’s, was in response to an increasing population of seniors and people with disabilities. It was considered to be a bad risk by private insurance companies. Our government took action, realizing that it could use the buying power of the millions of Americans living on fixed incomes. They saw an opportunity to negotiate drug costs with pharmaceutical companies and provide comprehensive medical coverage to the seventy five percent of older Americans living under the constant threat of bankruptcy, due to the rising costs of a private medical industry, with no obligation to its consumers. Since the inception of Medicare, opponents have been calling for an overhaul of the system, claiming it is inefficient and on the brink of bankruptcy. And they’ve won. Touted by the current administration as a plan that helps people when there’s a catastrophe in their lives, and a plan that means folks with low income won’t have to choose between food and medicine; Medicare Part D is a system wrought with deception that seniors and people with disabilities are finally beginning to understand. Part D is an effort by many of our elected officials to base social programs, like Medicare, around the principles of free enterprise and limited government. Medicare’s association with managed care is being promoted as a program that offers choice to seniors and people with disabilities who depend on the system. In this case, however, free enterprise and increased options do not go hand-in-hand. The proponents of the new system have co-opted the language and values used by the disability rights movement to convince us that the privatization of Medicare means increased options and huge savings for individual consumers, while purposefully enacting systems that actually increase costs for the most vulnerable Medicare recipients. Part D shifts costs from the Federal government to individual states and the consumer. The original Medicare model is built around the idea of society’s responsibility to all its members and collective risk-sharing. As costs are shifted from the Federal government to individual consumers, people with the lowest medical costs and the highest incomes will choose to leave the system or purchase private insurance; creating a pool in which only the poorest, most dependent people will remain, ensuring bankruptcy for the entire system. The authors of Part D are not content with simply bankrupting the system, however. They also want to ensure that those who do believe that the system can be improved lose faith in the government’s ability to sustain social programs such as Medicare. They accomplished this by reinforcing the new bill with provisions that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars of administrative costs (subsidies to insurance companies willing to participate in the program), making Medicare reform look less and less appealing to a congress with burgeoning national debt. People with disabilities and seniors are already feeling the pressure to choose between the medical care they need and their right to lead independent lives. Forced to spend a minimum (not including premiums, co-pays, and the twenty five percent of costs not covered by Medicare) of $2850 before the system begins to pay for any medical care comprehensively, people with disabilities have begun running up huge debts, which will inevitably lead to bankruptcy, pursuit of illegal guardianship, and forced institutionalization. There is some good news for those interested in preserving one of the systems that enable people with disabilities to lead independent lives. As we individually and as a community begin to fall into the doughnut hole, the point at which the new Medicare system abandons us entirely, we must, because our lives and our civil rights depend on it, begin to participate in the debate on the same level as the most affluent, powerful lobbyists in Washington. Those behind Medicare reform are counting on seniors and people with disabilities to vote this election as the general population votes, informed only by the propaganda of the powerful lobbyists and officials who tell us that our experiences are not valid and the system as a whole is performing with exceptional success. We know differently. We have seen Medicare move from a system, whose mission is to provide medical care to American citizens, abandoned by the capitalistic market-driven medical industry to a private insurance scheme. We know that there are other options, such as a drug benefit offered through Medicare itself, which cannot deny our most vulnerable citizens care based on their medical history or ability to pay. Some organizations are beginning to push this agenda. The Medicare Rights Center, an advocacy organization for people who receive Medicare, is advancing a Medicare drug benefit that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices; leveraging Medicare’s 43 million members to lower costs for themselves and the American taxpayer. They say, “The significantly lower prices Medicare can attain would enable the doughnut hole to be filled, while still allowing everyone with Medicare access to affordable drug coverage.” The November election is an opportunity to tell our Representatives and Senators that we need real Medicare reform and that it is still possible. We will, with a unified vote, reject the authors of Medicare Part D and those who support them. We will educate the representatives that were misled because of their good intentions and help them take back what has been stolen from us as a nation. Now more than ever, President Johnson’s imperative must be preserved, “Wipe out that shameful poverty persisting in the midst of wealth… because it is right, because it is wise, and because, for the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty.” ****** Eleanor Anne Canter is a free-lance writer and young advocate working at the Center for Independent Living in Muskegon, Michigan. PLEASE NOTE: PORTIONS OF THIS WEB SITE ARE UNDER CONSTRUCTION! |
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Copyright © 2006 by ILCHV |
