What's the best prescription for Medicare ills?
June 5, 1996
Web posted at: 12:00 p.m. EDTWASHINGTON (CNN) -- Not everyone was concerned Wednesday about the impending announcement by Medicare trustees that the program's hospital fund is going broke faster than previously thought.
Daniel Shulder with the National Council of Senior Citizens told CNN that Medicare is "not in a crisis." He said the federal health-care program for the elderly is a system of checks and balances where changes are expected.
"The fact that we have to do something within the next year or so to ensure that nothing goes bad in the year 2001 or 2002 is expected," Shulder said. "We will do that, but we are not going to do it by slashing benefits."
Last year, Medicare trustees predicted bankruptcy by 2002. But new projections show expenses will exceed revenues one year earlier. Medicare serves about 37 million people, and costs taxpayers an estimated $200 billion a year.
Medicare and Social Security account for 34 percent of the current federal budget -- up 20 percent since 1965. That percentage is expected to rise 5 percent in the next five years, partly because Americans are living longer.
Men and women are living about six years longer than they did in the 1960s.
What to do
How to fix Medicare is the greatest challenge.
Paul Hewitt with the National Taxpayers Union Foundation summed up Medicare as a vast system plagued with waste.
"If Medicare were aptly named, it would be called the Freedom to Spend Other People's Money Act," he said. Hewitt suggested Medicare become more like "an HMO-style managed care" system. But, Shulder adamantly disagreed.
"If we did that, I see accountants standing between patients and doctors," Shulder said. "That's what happens in HMOs, where the bottom line is profit margin, not care for the patient."
On Capitol Hill, the debate is just as intense.
In a news conference Tuesday, Republicans urged President Clinton to negotiate on a Medicare solution now.
"I'm hoping that accompanying the trustees' report will be the president's realistic solution to the ever-increasing problem of the solvency of Medicare," said Rep. Bill Thomas, R-California, whose House Ways and Means subcommittee on health oversees Medicare.
House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Missouri, responded by saying the Republican Party's "goal has been to raid Medicare, not to save it."
Related story:
- Medicare drifting more quickly toward bankruptcy - June 4, 1996
Related sites:
- Electronic Policy Network - Facts on Medicare
- Electronic Policy Network - Medicare Budgetary Savings: Implications for Beneficiaries
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