ObamaCare effects Medicare

[M&K's Retrievers]

You suspect wrong. You guys simply can't even imagine that the government is now playing God with people's lives. I guarantee you this will happen more and more until it finally makes the news, then people will believe.

Never will until it happens to them.

[YardleyLabs]

You suspect wrong. You guys simply can't even imagine that the government is now playing God with people's lives. I guarantee you this will happen more and more until it finally makes the news, then people will believe.

As with private insurers, Medicare doesn't determine what medical care you may receive, it simply says what care will be reimbursed by tax payers. There are fewer exclusions from coverage under Medicare than under almost any private plans. However, Medicare has a responsibility for excluding coverage for services that are not reasonable and necessary. Many businesses, of course, have based their entire activity on providing unresonable and unneccesary services to Medocare patients at public expense (e.g. companies offering to give you motorized scooters with no charge if they can't get Medicare to pay). The bill for "Obamacare" included projected savings from Medicare through several specific activities: eliminating subsidies to insurance companies that provided them with special subsidies for offering supplemental service programs, price negotiation for medical equipment and supplies and drugs, and better enforcement of restrictions on unreasonable services. Very few changes have happened so far. The biggest has been high rate increases or termination by many insurers of Medicare Advantage programs. The termination of those subsidies was not based on a belief that these programs were not good. Rather, the cost of the program was extremely high even though few people participated. If the number of people using the programs had grown as projected, Medicare would have been completely bankrupted. Since no one was prepared to ay the cost of extending these benefits to all, the decision was made to eliminate the benefit altogether, saving tens of billions of dollars. Little has been done with respect to other provisions of the plan. However, most agree that reasonable and customary limits on services are critical (similar restrictions have always applied in both private and public plans). However, one person's "waste" is always another person's "living", making controversy inevitable. Itis impossible to tell, from the description, whether or not the decision being referenced has anything to do with "Obamacare" or if the decision is reasonable. Unfortunately, a lot of medical care is given simply to create the illusion of being helpful in an otherwise hopeless circumstance. If better control reduces that abuse, we will all be the beneficiaries.

[TN_LAB]

Are we talking about a Medicare decision or a decision made by a Medicare Advantage plan?

[Steve Hester]

We are talking about Medicare. I thought the whole idea of ObamaCare was for every one to have insurance. This man could probably prolong his life for a good while, if he could afford to get the chemo, or if Medicare would pay for it like they should. For the government to make the decision that his life is not worth extending is horrible to me. So what's next? Pull the plug on all the people who are in comas because the government decides it's too expensive and they will probably eventually die anyway? Medicare has become a joke, as will ObamaCare.