“This week, I answered a grab bag of questions about drug copay coupons and primary care coverage on the health insurance marketplace.”
Michelle Andrews via Kaiser Health News.
Some great information provided in the article above.
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#health care #medicare #healthcare #seniors #elderly #older americans #retirement #retirees #retirement crisis #entitlements #entitlement reform #prescription drugs #rx drugs #earned benefitsMore you might like
House GOP Votes to Gut Medicaid, Weaken Medicare & Put Seniors’ healthcare at Risk
The National Committee strongly condemns the American Health Care Act (AHCA) just passed by the House, which needlessly puts the healthcare of millions of older Americans in jeopardy. “Despite the bill’s name, risking the health of our nation’s most vulnerable citizens to give the wealthy an $880 billion tax cut is tremendously uncaring — and does not reflect real American values…”
More on this issue via Entitled to Know.
Though Medicare is an essential part of retirement, pre-retirees continue to have misconceptions on how the federal program works.
Close to 90 percent of older Americans either enrolled in Medicare or plan to sign up for coverage, according to a recent survey from Nationwide Retirement Institute.
The insurer’s research arm worked with The Harris Poll to survey 1,007 adults over age 50 with a household income of at least $150,000.
More than 7 out of 10 participants said that they wish they better understood Medicare coverage.
via CNBC.
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Read more about Medicare by visiting our fast facts page by clicking here.
Medicare advocates celebrated Ryan’s announcement, noting that he will leave Congress without accomplishing his lifelong goal of reforming Medicare.
“House Speaker Paul Ryan’s retirement from Congress lifts a very dark cloud that has hung over older Americans for nearly two decades,” Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare said in a statement.
“During that time, Speaker Ryan has been the Privatizer-in-Chief on Capitol Hill – advocating to turn Medicare into a voucher program and to gamble retirees’ Social Security benefits on the whims of Wall Street.”
via The Hill.
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Farewell to Paul Ryan and His Insidious
“Entitlement Reforms.”
- As America’s Privatizer-in-Chief, he spearheaded attempts to turn Medicare into a voucher program and to gamble retirees’ Social Security benefits on the whims of Wall Street.
- He passed legislation in the House to cut more than $1 trillion from Medicaid by imposing per capita caps and turning it into a block grant program.
May is Older Americans Month, but the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans are putting a serious damper on the celebration. Yes, candidate Trump promised not to touch Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
But his administration has been actively undermining those pledges. Budget Director Mick Mulvaney — who once called Social Security a Ponzi scheme — questioned the legitimacy of Social Security Disability Insurance — and wouldn’t promise a Presidential veto of legislation to privatize Medicare (a pet project of House Speaker Paul Ryan).
President Trump champions the GOP’s American Health Care Act, which guts
Medicaid, undermines the solvency of Medicare, and allows insurers to
charge older Americans up to five times as much as people in their 20s.
More on this issue here via The Hill.
Meanwhile, a President who was willing to strip more than 20 million Americans of their health coverage in the blink of an eye has the gumption to paint Democrats as “extremists” on health care. If Medicare is under threat from anyone, it’s Trump and his allies in Congress.
When it comes to healthcare – and especially seniors’ health care – Trump chooses to dwell in an Orwellian ‘opposite world’ where Republican attempts to cut and privatize Medicare are actually meant to “protect” the program. Apparently, President Trump and his GOP allies believe they must destroy Medicare in order to save it.
You can read more from this blog post by clicking here.
- We are opposed to the House-passed American Health Care Act because of its adverse impact on older Americans and the Medicare and Medicaid programs and would like to see many of its proposals dropped or greatly improved in the Senate. In particular, we oppose:
- Reducing the Medicare Part A Hospital Insurance trust fund’s solvency by repealing the ACA’s 0.9 percent Hospital Insurance trust fund payroll tax on wages above $200,000 per individual or $250,000 per couple. Accelerating the exhaustion of the Part A trust fund would likely lead to cuts in Medicare, including privatizing the program, that would be detrimental to current and future beneficiaries.
- Driving up seniors’ out-of-pocket costs by repealing the ACA’s subsidies, based on income and the cost of health insurance, that help defray the cost of premiums. The AHCA would provide refundable tax credits ranging from $2,000 to $4,000, based solely on age. For many people age 60 and older, a $4,000 tax credit would fail to make comprehensive coverage affordable.
For the full letter please click here.
President Trump’s budget hurts seniors. From cuts to Social Security and Medicare to vital services, his 2020 budget will devastate older Americans.
Read more about it by clicking here.
These are significant sums, Kaufman says. Still, when he hears Republican lawmakers denounce Medicare and propose reducing benefits, he becomes livid and cites a statistic he saw on the website of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. Already, he reports, 45 percent of retirees spend more than one-third of their Social Security benefits on health care, from co-pays for care, to premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket fees for services – such as going to the eye doctor, dentist or audiologist – that are not provided. “We should be on the offensive, pushing for something better,” he says. “What we need is a single payer or socialized health care system.”
via Truth-Out.
Related Reading:
New Poll Shows Majorities Do Not Support GOP Proposals for Social Security and Medicare.
Deficit hawks likely will pressure the White House to accept cuts in Social Security and Medicare for future retirees, protecting those already retired or close to it. Their political goal will be to defang public opposition, since younger workers tend not to focus much on retirement when it is several decades away.
But that approach is not going to work. Retirees and their advocacy groups will fiercely resist cutting benefits down the road, because they understand the critical importance of Social Security and Medicare benefits. They also care about the future retirement of their own children. And numerous polls show that the public opposes benefit cuts - a view that is common across all demographic groups and political affiliations.
via Reuters.
Related Reading:
- New Poll Shows Majorities Do Not Support GOP Proposals for Social Security and Medicare.
- In the poll of likely voters, 79% favor increasing Social Security
benefits — and funding that increase by having wealthy Americans pay
the same rate into Social Security as everyone else. Seventy-seven
percent oppose raising the Social Security retirement age to 69, and a
whopping 93% favor allowing Medicare to negotiate to bring down the
price of prescription drugs.
President Trump champions the GOP’s American Health Care Act, which guts Medicaid, undermines the solvency of Medicare, and allows insurers to charge older Americans up to five times as much as people in their 20s.
Max Richtman via The Hill.