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Pros And Cons Of Medicare

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No Support for Premium Support Since the its establishment in 1965, Medicare has always enjoyed remarkable favorability and popularity among the American people as a public insurance program. In a poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation on the program’s fiftieth anniversary, 77% of individuals responded that Medicare was “very important,” second only to Social Security. While its importance is well acknowledged among the American public, controversy has sparked on the solvency and the affordability of the social insurance program. Empowered by such debate, policymakers have introduced various reforms to replace the Medicare program, with the most notable being the premium support or voucher program. Although the premium support reform, …show more content…

As mentioned, 77% of individuals polled believed the Medicare was “very important.” This consensus stretches across the political spectrum - in another survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 83% of Democrats, 71% of Independents, and 53% percent of Republicans supported “keeping Medicare as is.” Compared to the recent single digit approval rating for Congress, this widespread consensus seems unachievable in the polarized political climate of the country. Furthermore, the size of Medicare provides intangible benefits to the both its beneficiaries and the private insurance system. If an individual was covered under Medicare, there are countless options the patient can make within the network of numerous doctors and hospitals. With the implementation of a premium support system, beneficiaries would be insured under a private insurance plan and consequently, restricted to the medical networks that accept their specific insurance. Even so, the innovations in payments and health delivery systems pioneered by Medicare has often been adopted by private insurance. One such innovation is the implementation of the prospective payment system in which the payment for the specific service is based on its classification which aims to incentivize hospitals and medical providers to “provide the necessary care in the least expensive manner.” This system was introduced as a method to reduce costs as well as to provide the optimal care for beneficiaries, which is second to profit-seeking companies. Consequently, without Medicare, such innovations to the healthcare system today would not exist - simply because there was no monetary incentive for private companies to improve quality of care for

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The Bush Administration has acknowledged that there has been problems with implementation of the Medicare drug benefit but also contend that the benefit has helped most beneficiaries. On February 12, 2006, President Bush stated that competition between Medicare prescription drug plans has reduced costs for beneficiaries and taxpayers and that, on average, Medicare beneficiaries will pay about half of the amount that they paid for medications before the drug benefit was implemented. (American Health Line, Monday, February 13, 2006,

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Whether the American government should cover Medicare, and to what extent, has been a highly controversial topic for many years. Senator Bernie Sanders, alongside a group of Democratic congressmen, have introduced a new plane called "Single-Player Health Care. " What this new bill proposes, is a new way to completely cover the American people with health care within the next decade. The Op-ed "Single-Player Heath Care- a bad idea Democrats Love," written by U.S. Senator John Barrasso of Fox News, argues that Single-Player healthcare is not something that will benefit the American people. On the contrary, "Bernie Sanders: Why we Need Medicare for all”, by Senator Bernie Sanders of The New York Times, argues that the act would prove as extremely

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Over 28 million people in the world receive health insurance through the Medicare program (Gornick, n.d.). The medicare program was designed to operate throughout the nation with a set of uniformed benefits and cost-sharing requirements in the form of deductibles and coinsurance. However, over the years the program data indicated that the Medicare premiums and deductibles, benefits paid out varied significantly by state of residence of the beneficiary (Gornick, n.d.). These variations are due to part of the fact that reimbursements are based on local physicians' prices. Many policy analysts suggested that the geographic variations in Medicare reimbursements should be reduced (Gornick, n.d.).

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As much as the intention of Obamacare was good, Obamacare had placed politics above patients thus failing to protect the well-being and health of Americans. To find a solution it is important to assess the alternative of Obamacare, and if it is viable, it should be embraced since it is estimated that by 2050 31 million people will be not be covered by the Obamacare. It is important for Americans to evaluate where they have gone wrong with their medical care by learning from countries which have a medical success plan like Canada and the many of the European nation, for instance, the United Kingdom that has successfully used variations of the single-payer system. Reason Why Obamacare Is in A Mess

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Effective in 2011, a total of $1.5 billion dollars was refunded. In addition, insurance companies can no longer cheat people out of coverage due to pre-existing

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Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act (MMA) was signed into law in 2003 and the purpose of this law is to offer subsidized prescription drug plan to poor and low income seniors. The modernization ACT conference agreement was voted 220 to 215 by the House of Representatives and 54 to 44 by the State Senate. This new law will offer the beneficiaries more access to coverage options which would offer greater benefits irrespective of their health condition or income and also allow stiff competition between the private insurance plans and Medicare (https://www.congress.gov/bill/108th¬congress/house¬bill/1). The aim of this paper is to look at how the implementation of this Modernization Act will affect hospitals, physicians as well their patients.

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Nowadays, more people than ever are living longer and healthier thanks to our advancements in medicine, but it’s quickly becoming a problem for our Medicare budget. As more people become eligible for Medicare, more money will be paid to the beneficiaries. If this trend continues, our budget will be diminished in 2034. In addition to the increasing age, fraud and abuse in the disability program also put burdens on Medicare. In order to combat these problems, my proposals are to increase the retirement age and to reduce falsely charged billings.

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In the beginning, Medicare was thought of as a "sickness insurance program. " There were concerns that large segments of the population, especially laborers, who could not afford to pay their medical bills. While Medicare was in its planning stages, the American Medical Association (AMA) opposed a national plan from the start. " The AMA, in common with many Americans, thought of medical care as largely a private transaction between a medical practitioner and a patient.

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The progression of Medicare and Medicaid show major differences from the start of the services to currently. The progression of the services is due to lawmakers eliminating, improvising, and creating new aspects to Medicare and Medicaid. The lawmakers are the ones that progress the services. “Therefore it is important to carefully consider the policy recommendations of the candidate to understand their vision for the future of Medicare” (Cubanski & Neuman, 2008, p.1). Medicare and Medicaid should be considered when electing lawmakers, candidates, because they are the ones that determine the progression and changes of Medicare and Medicaid.

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In medicine, Medicare and Medicaid have made health care more inefficient and more expensive. Former ophthalmologist and Congressman Ron Paul tries to give the reader a sense of a time before such entitlement programs existed. Because Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in 1965, over fifty years ago, it is difficult for most Americans to remember a time without them: “the poor and elderly were admitted to hospitals at about the same rate they are now, and received good care […] every physician understood that he or she had a responsibility toward the less fortunate, and free medical care for the poor was the norm” (Paul). Without Medicaid and Medicare, physicians would act in a similar fashion today, since they did so without a government mandate

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Free Medicare Services Introduction Good health cutting across all age groups ensures that all individuals become productive for the nation, and thus the nation’s economy prospers. However, unaffordable healthcare has made this fate unachievable. A majority of the aged people struggle to afford basic resources that are required to afford healthcare. Despite reforms such as the Affordable Care Act being introduced in the healthcare sector to regulate Medicare, Medicare remains to be unaffordable to many elderly people (Kaplan, 2011).

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Ninety-five percent indicated that it was a serious or very serious problem that many Americans lacked health insurance and two-thirds of the public thought that it was the government’s responsibility to provide such insurance. Almost 90 percent were worried about the future costs of healthcare to themselves and their families. Numerous other questions reinforced the idea that Americans wanted Health Care Reform, they wanted it now, they wanted to make coverage universal, and that they were willing to pay for this (New York Times/CBS News

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The health care system is one of the greatest expense of the U.S. It has steadily increase over the years since 1965. Many policies such as the Obama care and health insurance have been implemented to help ease the cost. However, this new policy and health insurance are expensive and provide inadequate coverage. This expense has caused a negative effect on the market.

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Medicaid currently provides some universal healthcare to eligible adults with low income or resources, but the system can be expanded to cover everyone, which would provide the U.S. a healthcare system to the rest of the 37 OECD country without completely reconstructing the system. Furthermore, expanding the Inflation Reduction Act to regulate the pricing of more essential drugs would help to contain out-of-pocket costs that cause financial situations for individual payers. This combination would be most effective and beneficial to implement, as it is able to provide coverage to the majority population and reduce cost. As it is now, most Americans rely on private institutions to cover healthcare costs. “In 2021, private health insurance coverage continued to be more prevalent than public coverage, at 66.0 percent and 35.7 percent” (Keisler and Bunch).

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After the world war two, nearly every president —Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton—had tried to overhaul the nation’s health system. Every time reformers have to faced lots of obstacles, including fierce opposition from stakeholders such as the American Medical Association, business, and the insurance industry. Fragmented political institutions that made passing health care legislation, even when a president’s party controlled Congress, exceedingly difficult and Americans’ skepticism about government, which enabled opponents to scare the public with the specter of socialized medicine and tales of horrors in foreign health systems. Only Lyndon Johnson, was successful with the 1965 enactment of Medicare and Medicaid.

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