Dear person a few years older than me who is being promised some sort of legacy Medicare* grandfather clause,
You’re health care future is not as secure as it seems.
Right now, I wish we all had Medicare-like health care. I tolerate the special privilege you get because, perhaps over optimistically, I expect to be 65 one day and get the same special privilege. It not in my interest to ruin your good deal. In fewer tomorrows than I care to count, it’s going to be my good deal.
But, if you accept the political bribe from Paul Ryan & Co., our interests will no longer be aligned. The quality of your present health care is no longer the quality of my future health care. If you fail to channel some of your senior-go-to-voting political might into a defense of Medicare for all of us, you’re going to find yourself adrift with an ever shrinking band of cohorts defending legacy Medicare against inevitable calls for drastic cuts.
If the GOP is successful in gutting Medicare for those of us under 55, success that will be due to a lack of senior citizen involvement in a fight they construe as not theirs, they’re going to turn their attention to gutting legacy Medicare. Think all those under 55 are going to go to the ramparts to get your back? Not likely.
The way for you to make sure you keep Medicare as it is for you? Make sure you preserve Medicare as it is for me. We’re all in this together.
I am sorry to see your threats to senior citizens and disparaging remarks such as saying we are “privileged” to have Medicare. They are standard Democratic-party messages but I’ll chock it up to the fact that you are not yet on Medicare. If you were already 65, you’d know that
1.) the Medicare we seniors have been forced to buy via 40 years of paying Medicare taxes is terrible insurance and
2.) we basically already have what Wyden/Ryan proposes but it is achieved by having to buy three, four or more separate insurance policies.
First, here’s what Original Medicare (“Medicare as we know it” as you lefties fondly call it) provides (including not yet implemented “features” of PPACA):
— Lifetime limits (no catastrophic coverage)
— If hospitalized and admitted, seniors pay up to $6000 a year in deductibles
— Unlimited 20% co-pays if inpatient in a hospital but NOT admitted or if outpatient or visiting a doctor
— No vision/dental/annual-physical/drug coverage
— Geographic restrictions.
— Fees to doctors for Medicare services — already set well below market prices — will be cut 30% more beginning January 1, 2013 (therefore fewer doctors accept Original Medicare)
— Fewer and fewer accountable care organizations in Medicare (currently about 20% of Medicare beneficiaries belong to one) despite the fact that ACOs are the lynchpin of PPACA designed for those under 65 (using cuts from Medicare)
Second, therefore over 90% seniors find some healthcare insurance other than Medicare to depend on in their senior years. We do this basically in the way proposed by Wyden/Ryan but through contracting with multiple different private insurers insurers instead of the one private insurer that runs Medicare (in Massachusetts; in some states up to three private insurers administer Original Medicare).
— About 80% of that 90% pay up to $5000 per person a year, as much as $10,000 per couple per year (prices in Massachusetts-prices vary state to state), to protect ourselves.
— About 20# of that 90% get some public welfare to supplement Medicare, mostly Medicaid.
There is a major Medicare bureaucracy program involving 25,000 volunteers around the country to get the 10% that don’t choose something other than Medicare to change their minds.
Believe me, in addition to the obvious reason, you do not wish you all had Medicare.