Will Medicare Supplements programs change?
Republicans drilled holes into Medicare, and now private insurance companies are taking advantage to take away your coverage.
Alex Lawson from Social Security Care joined Thom.
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Health care is too important to be trusted to private insurance. Its a catch 22. Insurance only works for the people when they use it but only works for insurance companies when we dont. Its a clear conflict of interest.
@Da C. At least your faceless, nameless government bureaucrat is not going to raise your premium or try to deny you coverage when you become to expensive for their bottom line.
Da C. How about faceless, nameless CORPORATE bureaucrats?
Da C.
I am Australian and have been a tax payer for the last 20 years. Depending on my wage, I have paid as low as $250 to $750 per year in a Medicare levy. All my life I have had totally free healthcare along with my entire family and every Australian! If you are paying a couple hundred dollars per month just for “gap” insurance, your insurance company is making thousands out of you each year. So a question for you is why would you rather trust them?
@Jill Genrich same here in NZ cannot understand the USA goes against all we have experienced all they have is you to wait too long fore elective surgery mean while people die in the USA because they cannot afford healthcare or don’t go to the doctor when they should because of all the excesses.
Cruel.
I shouldn’t have to raise my volume all the way up and still struggle to hear this.
No problem here either.
Yeah, hearing isn’t covered.
Hearing should be covered under Medicare but it isn’t unless it’s a malfunction of the body part (such as a tumor), but regular aging? Nah.
Bad enough that its going from Obama care to don’t care but medicare should be sacred.
Medicare will likely become “drilled” full of more “holes” than kitchen colanders.
Medicare 4 All Bernie 2020!!!
Why do we even have to have part B? What exactly does Medicare itself pay for?
Part B is outpatient (doctors, labs) and Part A is facilities (hospital inpatients).
What’s covered under insurance is based on federal guidelines.
Medicare covers 80%… no dental, vision or hearing
If you have medicare advantage plan medicare pays NOT ONE DIME. I know I called when I had Humana and they refused a 39,000 procedure and medicare covered nothing after the procedure. Medicare part B and d as a con on the american people. Humana threatened me that if I didn’t carry their insurance and went into the hospital that medicare would not pay anything and they were right. This is a screw job folks.
But make sure you pay your taxes and follow the laws….
That only applies to the “little guys” as the rich can conveniently avoid both those issues.
Like our president?
Simple Nationalized medical insurance/ care paid out of general funds horizontally and vertically. No deductibles , no fees and pay for the medical education, research and drug patients too !
No equivocation! Take the entire spectrum of medical care OUT OF PRIVATE INSURANCE CORPORATIONS !
Simple Nationalized medical insurance is simply another pipe dream in America.
@Conald-is-a Scourge-on-humanity
Dreams can come through if enough people demand it ! Clearly the present system does not work , it too costly and the bottom line it does not deliver the results of actually improving health care .
Thats Bernie Sanders plan… Bernie 2020!!
@Conald-is-a Scourge-on-humanity They said social security was a pipe dream; Medicare for old folks was a “pipe dream” yet it happened. Everything for the common wealth is a “pipe dream” until it happens.
Your guest was not totally accurate.
I have plan G and it has the same coverage as plan F but I have a 186.00 yearly deductible which saved my wife and myself about 900.00 a year in premiums.
AVW
I have plan G as well. I figure I save enough in premium payments to offset the deductible.
Wow. the premium went down $900, just so it didn’t pay out $186. That is one f’d up business model.
BARBARIC AMERICA!! All Europe has Free Health mostly from 1945!!
Da C. Credible receipts for your claim
Da C.
Get away from Fox and learn some facts please. I am Australian with free healthcare and have never needed to wait to see a doctor. We also have free house doctors that come to you home after hours and weekends. The longest I have waited for an operation is 3 weeks as it wasn’t life threatening. Your insurance company is ripping you off!
@Da C. – That’s what it takes in my area (Georgia) now. Has been for a long time.
@Da C. No, one or twp day. Hospital is immediate if life threatening.
FDR rebuilt Europe in his vision, but he wasn’t able to do it here at home.
I have a Medicare supplement plan, but I chose one with a deductible so that it doesn’t really kick in unless I have to be hospitalized. I guess my plan won’t be affected by this, although my premium on it has gone up twice in 2 years.
Hey, We are so “free” in this “exceptional” country of ours we can grow old, get sick and die without the burden of healthcare…. Now that’s true American exceptionalism! God bless America?
how dare you mock this EXCEPTIONAL country , that terrorises the old, and children of the old!
Steve Scott Roots Music, Just for those odd Repubtards that may actually read, your comment and the following reply is dripping with sarcasm. SARCASM.
Medicare Advantage programs sound eerily like private & charter schools. This is scary stuff for those of us who still have a decade or so to go before being eligible.
Imagine being months from eligibility & sweating bullets. It’s possible we can fix it before you need it. We’ve got to try.
Medicare 4 All Bernies plan no deductables and everything is covered. Bernie 2020!!
Ann Hiller why do all of Europe have this system an America don’t. Because everything is so much better in USA? People who want change have to informed the 100 million voters that didn’t bother to vote about what can be if they vote….
I have had Medicare A and B with prescription part D since 2010. I depend on Medicaid to fill the gap. However, I have never gone without or been denied treatment. Medicare and Medicaid is by far the best medical insurance I’ve had compared to employer based insurance. My state covers dental. Essentially, I have what Medicare for All is offering. There is nothing bad about it. Medicare for All would free me from living only in states with the Medicaid expansion. They scare tactics about Medicare for All are toothless once you’ve lived the truth for nearly a decade!
Look up how much you have to pay with A without a gap coverage for hospitalization over 60 days. It’s $340/day
@SunTzuTech lol that must mean you have a lot of cash and assets. The government pays everything for me… As it should.
Nick Keith I’m not even on Medicare. I’m studying it and all plans so I can be ready when I qualify. If you’re poor and don’t have gap coverage and are hospitalized over 60 days, Medicare will put you in a catastrophic category, since you would have ability to pay. Don’t be such a putz
If you don’t have any assets Medicare/Medicaid is a great way to go. If you are a little old lady (man) living in the family home and go on Medicaid, beware that the state will most likely move against your estate when you die and claw back any monies paid out on your behalf. Of course, they never “clawback” from Wal-mart and other big employers who hire people and then they have to sign up for Medicaid because they don’t make enough to buy insurance.
We needs a single payer Medicare for all and to eliminate the insurance companies
Need to pry private insurance companies’ Million$ out of Republican’s pockets.
@Conald-is-a Scourge-on-humanity : out of corporate Democrats’ pockets as well. The old political descriptions are outdated. Now its human empathy vs. nazis. Rich vs. poor. Capitalists vs. workers. Science deniers vs. the scientific method. Corporatists vs. Humanists.
M4A Bernie 2020!!!
The more they kick and scream, the more we donate to Bernie
Bernie or no Bernie, Medicare for all is still an impossible pipe dream in America.
@Conald-is-a Scourge-on-humanity Goes to show what you don’t know.
un mog ….Bernie/Tulsi2020…..
Bernie Sanders 2020 – Medicare For All
America will do the right thing after everything else has been tried, the right thing is( SINGLE PAYER.)
Patients cannot have “skin in the game” when they NEED the service (life and death decisions) and when they do not have the expertise to evaluate whether a test, procedure, surgery, treatment, drug is necessary or not. Making people pay co-pays for expenditures they cannot control and evaluate does nothing for cost-efficiency or to avoid waste. It just punishes people that have the bad luck to get sick and who do not have money.
In _single payer systems the doctors make the individual decisions_ – while a _non-profit insurance agency provides the GENERAL framework._ The agency does not micromanage the decisions of the doctors. The main job of the agency: collect contributions, negotiate the contracts, pay the bills.
Negotiate the contracts (what does the hospital get per day for intenisve care, regular care, etc. usually the rates include fixed and variable parts). Or the tariffs for airlifts, or the prices for drugs.
Solutions like ACA assume you can leave the profit motive in place and relevant for individual medical decisions – but that you can “regulate” it so that patients and the government that pays the high subsidies will not be exploited. Well, the regulators would need to micromanage every single case. It is like allowing a wild animal into your house (even a harmless one like a raccon, or a smaller piglet, or a bear cub or a fox) and assuming that could work out well if you THEN (after admitting it) make provisions to avoid damage.
So …. – if you monitor it ALL the time it will not rip your house apart. You just have to watch it ALL the time. What could possibly go wrong – and why would you admit it into the house in the first place.
(for healthcare: why let the for-profit insurers or for-profit hospital chains play a role. After WW2 most nations decided they would NOT let them play a role. Every nation did their own things, observing some general rules (leaning strongly towards non-profit is one of them, the more, the better). And they all have been beating the U.S. cost-wise for decades.
So for-profit is allowed for a service like healthcare. A service that is about life and death and where the consumers are so much weaker than all the other players). That can be a foolish uncritical adherence to “free market” ideology (never mind that a free market can only function if ALL actors have about the same power and information – so healthcare is a terrible fit for the “free market”).
Or the lawmakers are bought by the special interests and prefer not to think too deeply about it.
Anyway:
If law makers implement general rules in the misguided attempt to regulate the profit motive (instead of eliminating it where it WILL create dysfunction and exploitation) – it will get complex.
Complexity just causes more admin and dysfunction and costs. The big players can deal with complexitiy, it is not their preference (they would rather be unregulated, but that is not realistic) – but they sure can make it work to their advantage and use it to game the system.
“Pretend regulations” also remove some political pressure – if there are no regulatons at all, there would be calls by the electorate to have some. Weak regulations that the profiteers can circumvent provide some cover. All the better if they are complex or have sneaky loopholes, the voters will not register the fine print. Colluding media and politicians can sell that as solution to the voters.
The extra costs to circumevent the regulations (more red tape) will be added to the costs. In the end the patients and tax payers pay for it.
In a single payer systems the agency sets up the framwork and the doctors then use the “tools” as they see fit. They will chose whatever they think can help their patients. On the other hand they have no reason to be wasteful with the resources. If they are not squeezed by the management of a for-profit company common sense, human decency and professional standards and ethics will prevail – IF the profit motive is not allowed to play any role and has been eliminated from the process.
They have NO profit incentive (hospitals are non-profits, and doctor practices are small companies and not allowed to become larger than that, no chains). So the doctors make the decisions based on medical criteria only. Every resident is covered and everyone has the right to the same treatments if the doctor thinks it is medically warranted.
The patients cannot prevent frivolous use of resources – the doctors can – and the agency must have an overall look at the costs. The system must be set up to deal with the players that would potentially cause dysfunction, waste and rigging – and who have the expertise to evaluate the decisions.
So NOT the patients.
Lets face it we are all screwed unless we elect Bernie Sanders, then just maybe we stand a chance against the establishment. The Revolution is Now!!
Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Donald Trump don’t support single payer Medicare for Everyone.