Q. How many people in the United States have Medicare, Medicaid, and Children’s Health Insurance?
A.The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare report that 98 million Americans receive Medicare, Medicaid, and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) benefits.
Long live the status quo but do not expand it.
Now that the elderly and the children are taken care of, those pesky people who work for a living should just hunker down and wait until they grow old. Once they no longer work and retire, they will be looked after.
I wonder who has the figures that show the percent of claims rejected by the government versus the percent denied by the insurance companies. I wonder who knows how many pre-existing conditions were excluded under Medicare and Medicaid.
John Stossel lives in the world that he fears.
Um… except that underpayment of those programs is one of the factors driving up costs for the rest of us. Certainly not the only one, but when Medicare reimbursement is less than the cost the provider charges, they raise the prices for others. Expand too much and you run out of people who are paying more.
Yes, they are under funded. I am not so sure that Medicare does not cover costs though.
An interesting thing happened to me two years when I went to the local clinic. I used my HSA card to pay for services and the doctor visit was $60. Later that year when I had my high deductible insurance company billed it was $120 for the visit. I learned that the farmers that paid cash for medical visits were always charged less than the insurance companies for the same visit.
It appears that we have a two-tiered system in place. Ever heard of this before?
Yes, it is absolutely true that healthcare providers charge different prices depending on who’s paying. This is one of the aspects of healthcare that can be reformed on it’s own, without 1000 pages of junk. And it should be something that would see widespread public support and fairly solid bi-partisan support. Require all providers provide charge the same price for an identical procedure to different people, and that prices be published up front. How do you argue against that? It’s arguable whether on it’s own, it would create downward pressure on costs due to competition. But it definitely would help make us better consumers of healthcare and make more informed decisions.
I would suggest that government’s current involvement in health care has contributed to problems in the system.
Also, now with BadgerCare Plus in effect, 98% of Wisconsinites have health care coverage. So we already have universal care. From the perspective of anyone living in this state, why would anyone be eager for our federal representatives to support/fight for a federal bill? If the feds pass a bill, can we opt out?
That is a good question and the answer is ‘no’. There are a number of things that I do not like about the current bill. One of them is the involuntary approach. Does Warren Buffet need healthcare coverage? Madonna? I think not but they would be forced to take insurance or else pay a special tax… This is anti-American to me. I want to see more options.
The other thing about BadgerCare, Massachusetts program and others show is that there are a lot of different approaches to this and anyone who says they know exactly what will work is lying. There are a lot of common sense changes to be made, but the cold hard truth is that there’s a lot guessing too. Despite saying otherwise, there is absolutely NO WAY Obama can promise that people who like what they currently have would not see changes in their doctor or their coverage. It’s either ignorant or a lie. Let’s see how the various state programs work out, what things work & what don’t. Do the no-brainer, common sense, 80/20 reforms, and encourage the states to experiment before blowing up the system for the whole country.