Medicare and Medicaide Essay

Republicans and economist want to privatize Medicare turning it into a voucher-like program that subsidizes purchases of private health insurance. House Republicans have proposed this bill in order to fulfill the GOP goal of balancing the budget in 10 years. Having said that, I can only hypothesize that the amount of capital available to the “new” Medicare population will dwindle and the needs of elderly patients may not be met.

Medicare and Medicaid has been providing huge benefits for senior citizens and low income families. The one question nobody seems to answer is how are we going to afford this type of insurance? Maya Rockeymoore argues in her article, “Groundless Fears about Medicaid and Medicare,” that we are able to afford this as long as we make good decisions. Rockeymoore claims that we need to keep Medicare and Medicaid or our country will fall apart.

The Medicare program is being perceived that it will go bankrupt in about 10 years unless there is major reform. There are six recommendations that should be reformed for the protection of the program for future generations. The program must protect retirees from an economic healthcare disaster. The cost of the program must be shared and this will motivate benefactors to reduce cost by adding accountability to the program. Reducing Medicare expenditures will have a much larger impact than increasing taxes. Calculating the retirement age in correlation to life

Fifty years ago, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare program into law. “It has been a reliable guarantor of the health and welfare of older and disabled Americans by paying their medical bills, ensuring their access to needed health care services, and protecting them from potentially crushing health expenses.” (Hamel, Blumenthal, Davis, & Guterman, 2015, p. 479). With the encouragement of George W. Bush, congress passed the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA). The MMA extended Medicare to include prescription-drug coverage, known as Medicare Part D. In 2013, Medicare covered the health care expenses for 52.3 million Americans, costing $583 billon. Originally, Medicare had difficulty controlling costs; physicians and hospitals were

Notably, the elderly populace is growing rapidly, and will reach 3.4 million or 12.8% of the population. Eventually, in the next thirty years older adults will comprise of 20% of the total population due to the aging of 76 million baby boomers (Olson, 2001). Seeing that, entitlement programs and means-tested benefits, are presented, in order to bolster this increment of older adults. Accordingly, around 96% of the American workforce is secured by Social Security and it is likewise estimated that 58 million American will receive a total of $816 billion in Social Security benefits (Moody and Sasser, 2015). In fact, today 56 million or 17% of the population is enlisted in Medicare (Leonard, 2015). Therefore, this has presented an open deliberation about the eventual fate of Medicare and Social Security and regardless of whether changing Medicare and Social Security to means-tested benefits, instead of entitlement programs can resolve the policy issues.

Medicare may not be perfect but until this program is changed it is what we have currently. Medicare has gone through changes since its inception in 1965. The most significant legislative change to Medicare--called the Medicare Modernization Act or MMA--was signed into law President George W. Bush, on December 8, 2003 (CMS, 2013). In a country with a complex healthcare system, a healthcare system that is a hot political stand for every presidential candidate and for each side to have valid arguments for and against is to be expected. But to say that Medicare is heading for disaster can be a stretch. Baby boomers who are entering Medicare eligibility age should not fret; there will be doctors there to service them and Medicare to pay those doctors.

President Obama’s pledge to pay for the program by taxing the rich, who is anyone that makes more than $1 million a year (which would include President Obama) and will make for “a marketplace that provides choice and competition” (Conniff, 2009). He also proposes that reform is about every American who has ever feared losing their coverage if they become too sick, lose their jobs or even change their jobs. It’s realizing that the biggest force behind our deficit is the growing costs for Medicare and Medicaid programs.”

Medicare and Medicaid are programs that have been developed to assist Americans in attainment of quality health care. Both programs were established in 1965 and are federally supported to provide health care coverage to vulnerable populations such as the elderly, the disabled, and people with low incomes. Both Medicare and Medicaid are federally mandated and determine coverage under each program; both are run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a federal agency ("What is Medicare? What is Medicaid?” 2008).

The U.S. health care system is a scrutinized issue that affects everyone: young, old, rich, and poor. The health care system is comprised of three major components. Since 1973, most Americans have turned to managed-care programs, known as HMOs. The second type of health care offered to Americans is Medicare, health care for the elderly. The third type of health care is Medicaid, a health care program for the poor.

Trump, like most Republicans since Reagan, ascribes the large tax cuts for the rich economic policy. However, Trump feels his tax cuts must be bigger and would result in a $9.5 trillion net loss in revenue during a decade. That is twenty percent of the total federal revenue projected for the same period. This would increase the federal deficit significantly. Trump’s solution to this issue is to recoup this money from the Medicare drug budget. With the number of baby boomers utilizing this governmental service, it is highly likely that these budgetary realignments would mean that federal government, at some point, would be required to subsidize these discrepancies. It would be required to borrow these funds, thus increasing the national deficit. It is an asinine plan.

Medicaid and Medicare are two different government programs. Both programs were created in 1965 to help older and low-income families be able to buy their own private health insurance. These programs were part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” plan, a commitment to helping meet the needs of individual health care. They are social insurance programs, which allow the financial load of patient’s illnesses to be shared by other healthy, sick, wealthy, and lower income individuals and families.

I believe the United States has an economic dilemma when it comes to social security and Medicare. As our textbook states, social security is drastically underfunded. It also says that Medicare is underfunded as well. I have listened to people who talk about how there will not be enough money in social security after the millennial generation. If this is true, then my generation and other generations after me will be in a terrible situation when they can retire. Medicare, a government, insured health insurance program, is also a matter of concern. Since the Medicare fund is underfunded at a high level, people who would need the help of their Medicare plan could potentially backfire. If the funding for Medicare does not reach a level where you would not have to worry about the quality of the care, then potential health risks could become much worse without adequate resources used to treat and prevent them.

Medicare and Medicaid are two of the United States largest broken systems, which must sustain themselves in order to provide care to their beneficiaries. Both Medicare and Medicaid are funding by a joint effort between the federal government and the local state government. If and when these governments choose to cut funding or reduce spending, Medicare and Medicaid take the biggest hit. Most people see these two benefits as one in the same, two benefits the government takes out of their pay check to help fund health care. While the government does deduct a sum from paychecks everywhere, Medicare and Medicaid are very two very different programs.

The growing concern regarding the financial security of Medicare is one of particular interest to the nearly 72 million baby boomers that become eligible for this government-assisted, and tax-payer bolstered, program over the next two decades. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2010), there will be a rapid increase in baby-boomers between 2010 and 2030, as the entire baby boomer population move into the 65 years and over category (p.3). Political and financial revisions must be made to ensure the security of Medicare as the numbers of individuals paying into this program are soon to be surpassed by the number of individuals drawing-off this program (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). The elderly are also at a disadvantage with transportation to health care visits, picking up prescriptions, and rehabilitation services. There needs to be an establishment of access not only to primary care providers, hospitals, and rehabilitation services, but access to other aspects of the health care system for the elderly population.

“Medicare-for-all” is piece of legislation proposed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders that advocates for a single-payer healthcare system and universal coverage for all in the United States (Keith & Jost, 2017). The bill details a national health insurance plan, funded by a government trust, that would cover all services from hospital stays to primary care visits, thus eliminating high out-of-pocket costs, copayments, and deductibles. Comprehensive coverage under Medicare-for-all would also include treatment for substance abuse, mental health counseling and resources, reproductive and maternity services, and even abortion (Keith & Jost, 2017).