Federal lawmakers have it all wrong: First, reform Medicare.
Then add benefits.
It's a formula for preparing the 38-year-old program to meet the
needs of America today. But Congress has reversed the process and
that could mean bad times ahead for Medicare and the country, says
Stuart Butler, The Heritage Foundation's chief domestic policy
expert.
"The sequence cannot be benefits first, reform later because that
basically means there's no reform," Butler says in the Aug. 11
issue of National Review.
Here's what befuddles Butler: In an attempt to "reform" Medicare,
the House and Senate passed separate bills that offer prescription
drugs as a new entitlement. However, neither bill really attempts
to introduce market-based reforms to Medicare. This is no good
because this drug "benefit" alone will cost $2 trillion by 2030 as
millions of baby boomers enter the program.
But what's really terrible is that there's already a
government-run health-care plan that has been using market-based
competition for decades. It's called the Federal Employee Health
Benefits Program, or FEHBP. It offers federal employees (including
members of Congress) and retirees a choice of dozens of health
plans-all of which cover prescription drugs. But only the House
bill offers anything remotely like this for Medicare patients-and
it starts in 2010. The Senate? Not even close. Leave it to Congress
to move "forward" by moving backward.
Read more about Heritage's Medicare research at heritage.org.
For more information or to receive an e-mail version of "Medicare
Maladies," contact [email protected]
or call Heritage Media Services at (202) 675-1761.
Report Health Care Reform
Medicare Malady #17: Congress Is Backwards on Medicare Reform
August 6, 2003 1 min read
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