The Wrong Direction:
Expansion of Profits and
and Expansion of Government
… and/or the already scheduled next step in privatizing Medicare
Last update: 5 April 2010
See update in red, below.
Expanded Profits … along with government dictating that Americans must buy a health insurance policy from a private company (or a public option if some version of that is established in 2010)
Members of the U.S. Congress and President Obama have moved forward to establish mandated health insurance in the United States. Reference: real life stories of Americans related to Massachusetts Mandated Health Insurance, hurting some people badly there since 2006.
Expanded Government
The plans, now signed into law by President Obama in March 2010, include these examples of the expansion of government: the expansion of Medicaid, the establishment of health insurance “exchanges”, the providing of subsidies to help citizens pay for the costly private health insurance premiums and the establishment of mandated (dictated, forced) purchase of private company health insurance policies. See more below.
Conclusion
The planned laws will hurt us at least three times
- force Americans to buy a service that most Americans do not want: the mandated health insurance.
- cause the prices of the defective for-profit health insurance to skyrocket; See: Regulations
- take more money out of more of our pockets and giving it to the health insurance companies
- force us to pay billions in increased income taxes to pay for:
- covering the poor
- covering part of the premiums of the middle income class and lower middle income class who can’t possibly afford to pay the expensive premiums
- expanding government to regulate the private health insurance companies, who will, in turn, be spending money fighting the government regulations, which will, in turn, cause the health insurance premiums to be even higher
Next Step in Privatizing Medicare
Important Update:
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No matter how many years it will take to implement all of the above additional bureaucracy, Medicare is scheduled to become even more privatized than it already was, starting in 2010. That’s the next step in eliminating what was the original efficient single-payer Medicare that was in place prior to 2003.
Six urban and 4 rural test markets are to be set up by 2010 with billions of dollars of “encouragement” to private plans to participate; read more in this web page and its links.
Background. As seen in the information about improved efficiency it is best to implement single-payer health care to help maximize the amount of money spent on health care and, as two meeting participants in New Hampshire clearly indicated, get profit out of health care financing.
An improved Medicare for All with single-payer health care is a dramatically better method for health insurance.
United States Medicare was single-payer national health insurance for seniors before action was taken by the U.S. Congress to privatize it in multiple steps.
Scheduled: Shocking Move in the Wrong Direction by the U.S. Congress and U.S. President:
Law Enacted in 2003 That Started the Privatization of Medicare
Next jump to full privatization scheduled for 2010
Compliments of the United States Congress’ action in 2003, the U.S. is scheduled to start throwing out the financing method that is good (simple, efficient single-payer) and replace it with the bad (complex, inefficient method of using private health insurance companies).
- The United States has been experiencing the efficiency of single-payer health insurance, because that’s what our Medicare system is.
- But the United States Congress and the U.S. President made a law in 2003 that schedules us to go to a higher use of private companies by the year 2010 in a trial of 6 cities and 4 rural areas in a “partly-privatized” Medicare system.
- The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 not only gave us the so-called prescription drug benefit (private health insurance company prescription policies subsidized by the government … corporate welfare), but also, the scheduled dismantling of our efficient single-payer Medicare system, as indicated by the six-city trial.
- This situation is, in a word, outrageous. We need an improved Medicare for All!
Further information about the Medicare Modernization Act:
- Privatize Medicare? NO WAY! gives a summary of concerns about the Medicare Modernization Act plus a 14:30 minute video,
- The Medicare Modernization Act Threatens Medicare Recipients and Medicare Itself
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
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