New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, (D) talks with residents at the Elliot Senior Center in Manchester, N.H., Friday.
(Jim Cole/AP)Photos (1 of 1)
Why GOP sees seniors as crucial to health-reform battle
Seniors vote, and members of Congress know it. The Republican National Committee on Monday released a proposed 'bill of rights' for senior healthcare.
By Peter Grier | Staff writer/ August 24, 2009 edition
Why did the GOP on Monday issue a “seniors’ healthcare bill of rights”? Perhaps because in the battle over health reform, the opinion of senior citizens could be a key factor determining victory – or defeat.
Seniors vote, and members of Congress know it. Retirees have time to attend town-hall meetings. The staff of any lawmaker can tell you that seniors pay close attention to the details of their Social Security and Medicare benefits and contact their representatives when they think something’s not right.
Senior citizens may be uniquely unsettled by the current healthcare debate. In a Kaiser Family Foundation poll this month, only 23 percent of respondents over the age of 65 felt they would be better off if health reform passed. Younger respondents were more optimistic.
Senior citizens “are less likely to see themselves helped” by the healthcare reform proposals of the Obama administration and Congress, concludes a Kaiser analysis of its tracking-poll data.
In this context of uncertainty, the GOP appears to see opportunity.
The Republican National Committee on Monday released a proposed “bill of rights” for senior healthcare that outlined six core principles, including protecting Medicare, prohibiting rationing of healthcare based on age, and making sure government doesn’t get between seniors and their doctors.
Under Democratic plans being considered in Congress, “senior citizens will pay a steeper price and will have their treatment options reduced or rationed,” wrote RNC chairman Michael Steele in an op-ed published Monday in The Washington Post.
The White House returned fire quickly, with a statement from Brad Woodhouse, Democratic National Committee spokesman, noting that the GOP opposed the creation of Social Security and Medicare and that Mr. Steele himself, when running for the Senate in 2006, called for Medicare cuts to balance the budget.
“Republicans are fighting against reform for one reason – to ‘break’ President Obama and gain political advantage,” Mr. Woodhouse said.
Still, there is little doubt that seniors are worried about what’s going on.
A Gallup poll released last month, for example, shows that by a 3-to-1 margin, seniors believe that reform will reduce their access to healthcare.
Medicare, the big government health plan for those over 65, would indeed face billions of dollars in cuts under the bills progressing in Congress.
But reform proponents say those cuts are focused on providers, not beneficiaries. Hospital payments would be reduced, for instance, in an attempt to lower expensive readmissions. Federal subsidies for the private Medicare Advantage Plans would be lowered. Medicare Advantage Plans currently cost an average of 14 percent more per person than traditional Medicare.
Wild charges that the bills would include “death panels” with the power to rule on end-of-life care have been widely debunked by such fact-checking organizations as PolitiFact. But many Republicans now insist that the bills might encourage rationing. To back up the assertion, they point to the fact that the reform legislation would set up government panels to study the comparative effectiveness of treatments.
For its part, AARP, the giant Washington lobby for senior citizens, says that the bill would help the over-65 population through such measures as expanding Medicare’s prescription-drug coverage.
“Nothing in the bills that have been proposed would bring about the scenarios the RNC is concerned about,” said John Rother, an executive vice president at AARP, in a statement.
Since July 1, about 60,000 seniors have quit AARP due to its support for healthcare reform. The organization has some 40 million members overall, and since July 1, it has recruited about 400,000 new ones.
Comments
2. hsr0601 | 08.25.09
The contents of savings (below) in this reform ‘have nothing to do with’ limit to medical access, rationing, tax raise, and deficit etc.
Rather, without wiping out these wastes and roots of bankruptcy for middle class, all fronts are sure to face larger financial ruin than this recession, which leads to more limit to medical access, more rationing, more tax raise, and more deficit etc than today.
$1.042trillion (cost of reform) + $245bn (cost to reflect annual pay raise of docs) = $1.287bn (actual cost of reform).
$583bn (the revenue package) + $80bn (so-called doughnut hole) + $155bn (savings from hospitals) + $167bn (ending the unnecessary subsidies for insurers) + 129bn(mandate-related fine based on shared responsibility) + $277bn (ending medical fraud, a minimum of 3% , the combined Medicare and Medicaid cost of $923.5bn per year, as of July,) = $1.391trillion + the reduced cost of ER visits (Medicare covers some 40% of the total) + the tax code on the wealthiest more reduced than originally proposed = why not ? (except for a magic pill, an outcome-based payment reform & IT effects and so forth).
Unlike high fuel price and mortgage rate in recent years as the roots of great recession and bankruptcy of middle class, the severity in the high cost of health premiums has come to light lately. Similarly, in an attempt to hide these deficit-driven corruptions and wastes, the greed allies struggle to turn the savings via removing these wastes into limit to medical access, rationing, tax raise, and deficit etc.
In contrast, not to mention a wide range of consumer protection, options across state lines, this promising reform takes initiatives in more primary care docs and improved long-term care. Unnecessarily, hope should not be replaced with all forms of malign lies, fear, just like people don’t have to fear quitting drug.
3. YolandaRC | 08.25.09
Debate is great, our country was founded on intelligent debate. What we are having is not debating, it’s uninformed people being riled up by the Republican party and Health Care Corporations, As a new 62 year old senior I’m praying this health bill succeeds especially reforms within the INSURANCE INDUSTRY. This industry is responsible for thousands of early deaths, they are not required to follow any guidelines; they are a law unto themselves. The Republican Party is well known for being DEFENDERS of CORPORATIONS, not protectors of citizens’ individual rights. Wish I had their FREE health care, I understand it’s the Cadillac of insurance plans, why can’t everyone participate? Are only Congressional people entitled to this ELITE health plan….
People who have good insurance, listen for one minute … if you lose your job you will be on the other side of this issue! If you think your premiums will not go up due to COBRA, you are mistaken. I saw my premiums triple when I had to retire!!! You do not get the volume breaks on premiums your employer gets…
MediCare is a GOVERNMENT program, seniors and if you don’t realize that you need to educate yourselves before you HURT yourselves. Think of your grandchildren, are they not entitled to the same health care as you are??? I will gladly pay the extra taxes to extend this type of health care to all Americans. You can be uncaring and angry all you want,but none of us live forever. Don’t continue letting others brainwash you … go to the library and analyze the issues we are facing. Don’t be fooled, we need REFORM now! Don’t be sheep, don’t repeat what you hear, think for yourselves.
4. Garth Oldham | 08.25.09
Your story is less than truthful(and most that talk about this are as well) when you speak of subsidies to Medicare Advantage plans. While you are accurate when you say, “Federal subsidies for the private Medicare Advantage Plans would be lowered. Medicare Advantage Plans currently cost an average of 14 percent more per person than traditional Medicare,” You are leaving out some very pertinent and essential facts.
Fact is the president has often said and continues to say that cutting $177 billion in subsidies to Medicare Advantage providers over the next decade would save money but not result in cuts in “Medicare benefits.” That is, at the least, very misleading. In fact the more he says it the closer it gets to a downright lie.
Those subsidies under federal law must be used to give the Medicare recipients insured by those plans increased and added benefits. That’s why they call them Medicare “advantage” plans. So, while those insured would not lose any of the benefits that regular or traditional Medicare provides, they would lose the additional and increased benefits that Medicare Advantage programs provide.
Right now I am looking at an advantage plan down here in South Texas that would cost me nothing, yet would offer all the standard Medicare benefits and include some substantial extra benefits as well, for instance a very good prescription drug benefit (Plan D equivalent).
Maybe Medicare simply can’t afford to continue these additional payments, but why isn’t anyone, including yourselves, calling the president and, in fact, AARP on this one since 20-to-25 percent of seniors, over 11 million Americans, have these very popular plans?
5. Garth Oldham | 08.25.09
Your story is less than truthful(and most that talk about this are as well) when you speak of subsidies to Medicare Advantage plans. While you are accurate when you say, “Federal subsidies for the private Medicare Advantage Plans would be lowered. Medicare Advantage Plans currently cost an average of 14 percent more per person than traditional Medicare,” You are leaving out some very pertinent and essential facts.
Fact is the president has often said and continues to say that cutting $177 billion in subsidies to Medicare Advantage providers over the next decade would save money but not result in cuts in “Medicare benefits.” That is, at the least, very misleading. In fact the more he says it the closer it gets to a downright lie.
Those subsidies under federal law must be used to give the Medicare recipients insured by those plans increased and added benefits. That’s why they call them Medicare “advantage” plans. So, while those insured would not lose any of the benefits that regular or traditional Medicare provides, they would lose the additional and increased benefits that Medicare Advantage programs provide.
Right now I am looking at an advantage plan down here in South Texas that would cost me nothing, yet would offer all the standard Medicare benefits and include some substantial extra benefits as well, for instance a very good prescription drug benefit (Plan D equivalent).
Maybe Medicare simply can’t afford to continue these additional payments, but why isn’t anyone, including yourselves, calling the president and, in fact, AARP on this one since 20-to-25 percent of seniors, over 11 million Americans, have these very popular plans?
6. Paul | 08.25.09
Dave: I didn’t see any reference in this article to the DNC calling for President Obama to control the debate. Your wild fears appear to be unfounded. I would like to see President Obama debunk these fears in a prime-time Oval Office address. He could speak to seniors directly and tell them the facts: they will not lose coverage, their costs (prescription drugs, for example) will even decrease, etc.
And, in no uncertain terms, he should call the “death panels” an ugly, ugly lie. Should those provisions be removed from the bills? NO WAY! President Obama should remind seniors that it was Republicans who supported the measures in the first place! That is how you deal with such unfounded attacks. Bullies need to be confronted. I believe this president needs to draw a line in the sand, firmly and yet good-naturedly.
7. John DeFlumeri Jr | 08.25.09
Seniors are the most important political group, that’s why! They have the time to be informed, and the time to vote as well as campaign for or against any issue they are interested in!
John DeFlumeri Jr. from Clearwater, Fla (the Senior Citizen Capital of the United States!
8. Laurel Marquart | 08.27.09
“But reform proponents say those cuts are focused on providers, not beneficiaries. Hospital payments would be reduced, for instance, in an attempt to lower expensive readmissions. Federal subsidies for the private Medicare Advantage Plans would be lowered. Medicare Advantage Plans currently cost an average of 14 percent more per person than traditional Medicare.”
The above quote is not entirely true. The Medicare Advantage Plan my husband has with Secure Horizons costs him absolutely nothing. With it he also has no monthly charge for a prescription drug plan and a 30-day supply of his blood pressure medicine is $5.00. Doctor’s visits, regardles of what procedures or tests are performed, only cost him $10.00. Among other benefits, he gets a reduced charge for emergency room fees, and an ambulance only costs $100 (the standard cost is $900).
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1. Dave | 08.24.09
So the DNC is telling Obama he must take control of the debate. What the heck does that mean. Does that mean you stifle debate. Sounds like it to me by his ironfist actions and his name calling. When is the public going to get over the “what are you going to give me mentaility?” You voted for him not me. But be forwarned when the government gives it takes. The government is broke. It is printing money by the boatloads.