Medicare Health Insurance Quotes

On Rachel's show for November 7, 2012: We're not going to have a supreme court that will overturn Roe versus Wade. There will be no more Antonio Scalias and Samuel Aleatos added to this court. We're not going to repeal health reform. Nobody is going to kill medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get health insurance. We are not going to do that. We are not going to give a 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid's insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut. We'll not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you're on. We are not going to redefine rape. We are not going to amend the United States constitution to stop gay people from getting married. We are not going to double Guantanamo. We are not eliminating the Department of Energy or the Department of Education or Housing at the federal level. We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military does not want. We are not scaling back on student loans because the country's new plan is that you should borrow money from your parents. We are not vetoing the Dream Act. We are not self-deporting. We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt. We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January. We are not going to have, as a president, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared, gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help and there was no apology, not ever. We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton. We are not bringing Dick Cheney back. We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War. We are not going to do it. We had the chance to do that if we wanted to do that, as a country. and we said no, last night, loudly.

Studies have showed that hospitals charge patients who are uninsured or self-pay 2.5 times more than they charge covered by health insurance (who are billed negotiated rates) and three times more than the amount allowed by Medicare.

Consider almost any public issue. Today’s Democratic Party and its legislators, with a few notable individual exceptions, is well to the right of counterparts from the New Deal and Great Society eras. In the time of Lyndon Johnson, the average Democrat in Congress was for single-payer national health insurance. In 1971, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, for universal, public, tax-supported, high-quality day care and prekindergarten. Nixon vetoed the bill in 1972, but even Nixon was for a guaranteed annual income, and his version of health reform, “play or pay,” in which employers would have to provide good health insurance or pay a tax to purchase it, was well to the left of either Bill or Hillary Clinton’s version, or Barack Obama’s. The Medicare and Medicaid laws of 1965 were not byzantine mash-ups of public and private like Obamacare. They were public. Infrastructure investments were also public. There was no bipartisan drive for either privatization or deregulation. The late 1960s and early 1970s (with Nixon in the White House!) were the heyday of landmark health, safety, environmental, and financial regulation. To name just three out of several dozen, Nixon signed the 1970 Clean Air Act, the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the 1973 Consumer Product Safety Act. Why did Democrats move toward the center and Republicans to the far right? Several things occurred. Money became more important in politics. The Democratic Leadership Council, formed by business-friendly and Southern Democrats after Walter Mondale’s epic 1984 defeat, believed that in order to be more competitive electorally, Democrats had to be more centrist on both economic and social issues.

Medicare would not pay for more basic “life support,” such as someone to help Mr. St. Pierre to get up and dressed each day, to bathe him a few times a week, or to prepare his meals. These things were not health care, and Medicare and insurance guidelines make clear that only health care is covered.

How do we reward this kind of work? Chad Boult, the geriatrician who was the lead investigator of the University of Minnesota study, can tell you. A few months after he published the results, demonstrating how much better people’s lives were with specialized geriatric care, the university closed the division of geriatrics. “The university said that it simply could not sustain the financial losses,” Boult said from Baltimore, where he had moved to join the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. On average, in Boult’s study, the geriatric services cost the hospital $1,350 more per person than the savings they produced, and Medicare, the insurer for the elderly, does not cover that cost. It’s a strange double standard. No one insists that a $25,000 pacemaker or a coronary-artery stent save money for insurers. It just has to maybe do people some good.

On average, Medicare only reimburses hospitals 87 cents for every dollar spent.37 How do hospitals stay in business? By charging people with private health insurance significantly more for health care services to make up the difference.

The former covered hospital care and the latter doctors’ visits. Between 1940 and 1955, the number of Americans with health insurance skyrocketed from 10 percent to over 60 percent. That was before the advent of government programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

What American Healthcare Can Learn from Italy: Three Lessons It’s easy. First, learn to live like Italians. Eat their famous Mediterranean diet, drink alcohol regularly but in moderation, use feet instead of cars, stop packing pistols and dropping drugs. Second, flatten out the class structure. Shrink the gap between high and low incomes, raise pensions and minimum wages to subsistence level, fix the tax structure to favor the ninety-nine percent. And why not redistribute lifestyle too? Give working stiffs the same freedom to have kids (maternity leave), convalesce (sick leave), and relax (proper vacations) as the rich. Finally, give everybody access to health care. Not just insurance, but actual doctors, medications, and hospitals. As I write, the future of the Affordable Care Act is uncertain, but surely the country will not fall into the abyss that came before. Once they’ve had a taste of what it’s like not to be one heart attack away from bankruptcy, Americans won’t turn back the clock. Even what is lately being called Medicare for All, considered to be on the fringe left a decade ago and slammed as “socialized medicine,” is now supported by a majority of Americans, according to some polls. In practice, there’s little hope for Italian lessons one and two—the United States is making only baby steps toward improving its lifestyle, and its income inequality is worse every year. But the third lesson is more feasible. Like Italy, we can provide universal access to treatment and medications with minimal point-of-service payments and with prices kept down by government negotiation. Financial arrangements could be single-payer like Medicare or use private insurance companies as intermediaries like Switzerland, without copying the full Italian model of doctors on government salaries. Despite the death by a thousand cuts currently being inflicted on the Affordable Care Act, I am convinced that Americans will no longer stand for leaving vast numbers of the population uninsured, or denying medical coverage to people whose only sin is to be sick. The health care genie can’t be put back in the bottle.

critics would complain if he spent billions on vaccines and nothing on therapeutics. However, any licensed, repurposed antiviral that was effective against COVID for prevention or early treatment (like IVM or HCQ) could kill his entire vaccine program because FDA wouldn’t be able to grant his jabs Emergency Use Authorization. Remdesivir, however, was an IV remedy, appropriate only for use on hospitalized patients in the late stages of illness. It would therefore not compete with vaccines, allowing Dr. Fauci to support it without compromising his core business. Furthermore, while HCQ and IVM were off-patent and available generically, remdesivir was in the sweet spot of still being on patent. The potential profit upside was impressive. Remdesivir cost Gilead $10 per dose to manufacture.18,19 But by granting Gilead an EUA, regulators could force private insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid to fork over around $3,120.00 per treatment—hundreds of times the cost of the drug.20,21 Gilead predicted remdesivir would bring in $3.5 billion in 2020 alone.

The potential profit upside was impressive. Remdesivir cost Gilead $10 per dose to manufacture.18,19 But by granting Gilead an EUA, regulators could force private insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid to fork over around $3,120.00 per treatment—hundreds of times the cost of the drug.

The freedom of choice provided by fee-for-service Original Medicare to beneficiaries comes at a financial cost. The reason is as obvious as the phrase. Fee-for-service means that health care providers get paid for the surgeries, care, and other health care services they provide. It says nothing about whether all this health care is needed or even in the best interest of the patient. Medicare Advantage health networks, by contrast, can be cheaper providers of care than can fee-for-service Medicare. Insurers can control costs more effectively by assembling their own groups of doctors, hospitals, and other service providers. Cheaper health care, not surprisingly, has its own downsides. Provider networks are so important to the present and future prospects of Medicare beneficiaries that they merit their own chapter (12) later in this book.

For interested consumers, there are many health pricing tools. For starters, I recommend The Wall Street Journal’s “Medicare Unmasked” tools,2 although they may be behind a paywall. The Health Care Cost Institute3 is a health-insurer funded effort to compare the cost of various procedures around the country.4 ProPublica, a non-profit news site, is one of several consumer sites that has used the CMS databases to build tools that are not exactly beloved by health care providers, including Dollars for Docs5 and Surgeon Scorecard.6

The Libertarian Party platform on which Koch ran in 1980 was unambiguous. It included the following: • We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs. • We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services. . . . • We favor the repeal of the . . . Social Security system. . . . • We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes. • We support the eventual repeal of all taxation. • As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately. • We support repeal of all . . . minimum wage laws. . . . • Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended. . . . • We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency. . . . • We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system. . . . • We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration. . . . • We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and “aid to the poor” programs.44 The list went on from there, including ending government oversight of abusive banking practices by ending all usury laws; privatizing our airports, the FAA, Amtrak, and all of our rivers; and shutting down the Post Office.

In a study Suzanne Mettler asked 1,400 Americans whether they had used a government social program. Fifty-seven percent said they had not. Then she asked if they had used one of twenty-one specific federal policies, including child-care tax credits, the Earned Income Tax Credit, employer-sponsored and thus tax exempted health insurance, Medicare, Social Security, unemployment insurance, mortgage-interest deductions, and student loans. It turned out that 96 percent of those who had denied using government programs had in fact used at least one, and the average responder had used four. This clear disconnect between Americans' perception of who benefits from government programs and the reality makes it easier to keep demonizing the "welfare state.

I feel that the government should uphold the concept that it is there for us, “We the People.” That it does what we alone cannot do. By standing unified and proud, we have strength because of our numbers and the power to do what is right. That we always remain on the right side of history and care for and respect our less fortunate. Now, you may think that I’m just spouting out a lot of patriotic nonsense, which you are entitled to do, however I did serve my country actively in both the Navy and Army for a total of forty years, six months and seven days as a reservist and feel that I have an equal vested interest in these United States. If we don’t like what is happening we have responsible ways and means to change things. We have Constitutional, “First Amendment Rights to Freedom of Speech.” There are many things I would like to see change and there are ways that we can do this. To start with we have to protect our First Amendment Rights and protect the media from government interference…. I also believe in protecting our individual freedom…. I believe in one person, one vote…. Corporations are not people, for one they have no human feelings…. That although our government may be misdirected it is not the enemy…. I want reasonable regulations to protect us from harm…. That we not privatize everything in sight such as prisons, schools, roads, social security, Medicare, libraries etc.….. Entitlements that have been earned should not be tampered with…. That college education should be free or at least reasonable…. That health care becomes free or very reasonable priced for all…. That lobbyist be limited in how they can manipulate our lawmakers…. That people, not corporations or political action committees (PAC’s), can only give limited amounts of money to candidates…. That our taxes be simplified, fair and on a graduated scale without loop holes….That government stays out of our personal lives, unless our actions affect others…. That our government stays out of women’s issues, other than to insure equal rights…. That the law (police) respects all people and treats them with the dignity they deserve…. That we no longer have a death penalty…. That our military observe the Geneva Conventions and never resort to any form of torture…. That the Police, FBI, CIA or other government entities be limited in their actions, and that they never bully or disrespect people that are in their charge or care…. That we never harbor prisoners overseas to avoid their protection by American law…. That everyone, without exception, is equal…. And, in a general way, that we constantly strive for a more perfect Union and consider ourselves members of a greater American family, or at the very least, as guests in our country. As Americans we are better than what we have witnessed lately. The idea that we will go beyond our rights is insane and should be discouraged and outlawed. As a country let us look forward to a bright and productive future, and let us find common ground, pulling in the same direction. We all deserve to feel safe from persecution and/or our enemies. We should also be open minded enough to see what works in other countries. If we are going to “Make America Great Again” we should start by being more civil and kinder to each other. Now this is all just a thought, but it’s a start…. “We’re Still Here!

Senator Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare, and dismantle private insurance,” Chelsea said of Sanders’s Medicare-for-all health care plan. “I don’t want to empower Republican governors to take away Medicaid, to take away health insurance for low-income and middle-income working Americans. And I think very much that’s what Senator Sanders’ plan would do.

Social policies that benefit everyone—Social Security and Medicare are prime examples—could help diminish resentment, build bridges across large swaths of the American electorate, and lock into place social support for more durable policies to reduce income inequality—without providing the raw materials for racially motivated backlash. Comprehensive health insurance is a prominent example.

A far better way to slow medical costs is to use Medicare and Medicaid’s bargaining power over drug companies and hospitals to get lower prices and to move from a fee-for-service system to a fee-for-healthy-outcomes system. And because Medicare has far lower administrative costs than private health insurers, we should make Medicare available to everyone.

According to the Pew study, our collective list of concerns goes like this: the economy, jobs, terrorism, Social Security, education, energy, Medicare, health care, deficit reduction, health insurance, helping the poor, crime, moral decline, the military, tax cuts, environment, immigration lobbyists, trade policy, and global warming, in that order.

private insurance and away from Medicare. The result would be “two-tier medicine,” a term that is as pejorative in Canada as “socialized medicine” is in the United States. Many fear that if Canada did move to two-tier medicine, the rich might get better care, with less waiting, than the poor. The rich getting better access to health care—that’s a fact of life that we take for granted in the United States. But in Canada, such a result would violate the powerful egalitarian impulse that is a crucial element of the national culture.

People employ what economists call “rational ignorance.” That is, we all spend our time learning about things we can actually do something about, not political issues that we can’t really affect. That’s why most of us can’t name our representative in Congress. And why most of us have no clue about how much of the federal budget goes to Medicare, foreign aid, or any other program. As an Alabama businessman told a Washington Post pollster, “Politics doesn’t interest me. I don’t follow it. … Always had to make a living.” Ellen Goodman, a sensitive, good-government liberal columnist, complained about a friend who had spent months researching new cars, and of her own efforts study the sugar, fiber, fat, and price of various cereals. “Would my car-buying friend use the hours he spent comparing fuel-injection systems to compare national health plans?” Goodman asked. “Maybe not. Will the moments I spend studying cereals be devoted to studying the greenhouse effect on grain? Maybe not.” Certainly not —and why should they? Goodman and her friend will get the cars and the cereal they want, but what good would it do to study national health plans? After a great deal of research on medicine, economics, and bureaucracy, her friend may decide which health-care plan he prefers. He then turns to studying the presidential candidates, only to discover that they offer only vague indications of which health-care plan they would implement. But after diligent investigation, our well-informed voter chooses a candidate. Unfortunately, the voter doesn’t like that candidate’s stand on anything else — the package-deal problem — but he decides to vote on the issue of health care. He has a one-in-a-hundred-million chance of influencing the outcome of the presidential election, after which, if his candidate is successful, he faces a Congress with different ideas, and in any case, it turns out the candidate was dissembling in the first place. Instinctively realizing all this, most voters don’t spend much time studying public policy. Give that same man three health insurance plans that he can choose from, though, and chances are that he will spend time studying them. Finally, as noted above, the candidates are likely to be kidding themselves or the voters anyway. One could argue that in most of the presidential elections since 1968, the American people have tried to vote for smaller government, but in that time the federal budget has risen from $178 billion to $4 trillion. George Bush made one promise that every voter noticed in the 1988 campaign: “Read my lips, no new taxes.” Then he raised them. If we are the government, why do we get so many policies we don’t want?

People employ what economists call “rational ignorance.” That is, we all spend our time learning about things we can actually do something about, not political issues that we can’t really affect. That’s why most of us can’t name our representative in Congress. And why most of us have no clue about how much of the federal budget goes to Medicare, foreign aid, or any other program. As an Alabama businessman told a Washington Post pollster, “Politics doesn’t interest me. I don’t follow it. … Always had to make a living.” Ellen Goodman, a sensitive, good-government liberal columnist, complained about a friend who had spent months researching new cars, and of her own efforts study the sugar, fiber, fat, and price of various cereals. “Would my car-buying friend use the hours he spent comparing fuel-injection systems to compare national health plans?” Goodman asked. “Maybe not. Will the moments I spend studying cereals be devoted to studying the greenhouse effect on grain? Maybe not.” Certainly not —and why should they? Goodman and her friend will get the cars and the cereal they want, but what good would it do to study national health plans? After a great deal of research on medicine, economics, and bureaucracy, her friend may decide which health-care plan he prefers. He then turns to studying the presidential candidates, only to discover that they offer only vague indications of which health-care plan they would implement. But after diligent investigation, our well-informed voter chooses a candidate. Unfortunately, the voter doesn’t like that candidate’s stand on anything else — the package-deal problem — but he decides to vote on the issue of health care. He has a one-in-a-hundred-million chance of influencing the outcome of the presidential election, after which, if his candidate is successful, he faces a Congress with different ideas, and in any case, it turns out the candidate was dissembling in the first place. Instinctively realizing all this, most voters don’t spend much time studying public policy. Give that same man three health insurance plans that he can choose from, though, and chances are that he will spend time studying them. Finally, as noted above, the candidates are likely to be kidding themselves or the voters anyway. One could argue that in most of the presidential elections since 1968, the American people have tried to vote for smaller government, but in that time the federal budget has risen from $178 billion to $4 trillion.

We should remember why those programs were started: before the arrival of Medicare and Social Security, the private sector left most elderly bereft of support, the market for annuities essentially didn’t exist, and the elderly couldn’t get health insurance. Even today, the private sector doesn’t provide the kind of security that Social Security provides—including protection against market volatility and inflation. And the transactions costs of the Social Security Administration are markedly lower than those in the private sector. In addition, many of the people who receive government benefits without paying for them are our young, obviously unable to pay, say, for their own education. But spending on them is an investment in the country’s future. An

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