This article is very telling. The recent Medicare bill that passed was certainly not perfect, but that Bush doesn’t like it tells me that we are better off with it than without it. But all of the details listed points to the reason why the moneyed interests have to be neutralized with public funding of campaigns. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a bill pass without money changing hands?

Medicare Advantage, the privatized side of Medicare, is costing taxpayers 17% more than traditional Medicare. The R’s wanted to cut physician payments for public Medicare by 10% in order to continue the 17% private subsidy, or overpayment.

As I mentioned above, so much for “private” being more efficient than “public.”

Medicare Advantage should have been cut to equal public Medicare nonetheless, but cutting public Medicare was the conservative’s way of killing Medicare and forcing patients into the more costly private system. They weren’t even smart enough to find the 17% elsewhere, by cutting other spending, so they paid the price.

How their effort becomes “positive Medicare reform” is beyond me (and the 10% cut was put in years ago, not last fall, and even if it were Bush would have had to sign it into law. The Republican congress did this.).

But if you happen to be an insurance salesman making a living on private Medicare, I can understand your ire. The 17% bloat will be gone and private insurers will have to meet the public price. To some that’s hard to swallow.

And besides, physician payments are not what is driving health care costs through the roof. It’s insurance bureaucracy waste, fraud, and overutilization, none of which the R’s (or D’s) want to tackle.

Stealing the money from MedicareAdvantage is nothing more than an attempt to reverse the first significant and postive Medicare reform in a two generations.

Last fall, the Democrats chose to place a 10% cut in provider reimbursements into the Medicare package just so Republicans would be put in this unnecessary position.

I guess the Democrat’s just don’t want to let people have the option of more and better choices. Instead they are underfunding Medicare and cutting payments to providers – that’s what government run health care gets you.

You are a great source… for what’s wrong with health care and why liberals should be kept as far away from the system as possible.

And I might add, Sensenbrenner seems quite heartless on this, though he is protected with a nice, gold-plated taxpayer-paid plan for life.

I’ve had an HSA for 6 years, traded down twice, and I’m onto their low ball formula. Every year they increase premiums around $1200 and try to get you to increase your already high deductable. After 5 years, your up to the equivalent of a normal HMO premium but with a very high deductable. Of course, the $1200 increase continues year after year, never stopping. So what if I can shop for a cheap doctor, the insurance will kill you first.

Keep up the great work. You’re a great source.