Garcia: GOP plans to overhaul Medicare would decimate it

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Typically, you become familiar with Medicare when you start relying on it for health insurance in retirement.

Until then, you might only notice that you’re paying into Medicare, a federal health insurance program, through deductions noted on your pay stub and W-2 Wage and Tax Statement.

And unless you’re acutely aware of the benefits provided by Medicare, it’s easy to underestimate their value.

Medicare is a vital safety net program, like Social Security. More Americans — and I mean people in their 20s all the way up to their 50s — should understand that.

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and others in the GOP want to dismantle and rebuild Medicare to rein in spending. But their plan likely would diminish benefits for Americans, and that would be a travesty.

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Medicare was established in 1965 and is a lifeline for middle- and working-class retirees. I figured that out more than a decade ago when my father battled terminal cancer.

After he paid a deductible of about $700, Medicare covered in full a 14-day hospital stay. Today, Medicare’s deductible for hospital coverage is $1,288. The monthly premium most people pay for Medicare medical insurance is $104.90, a pretty good deal.

With Medicare, my father benefited from steep discounts on doctors’ services. A surgeon’s bill of $3,905 came down to $1,315.86, an adjustment the doctor accepted as a participating provider. Medicare paid 80 percent of the reduced charge; my dad’s private supplemental insurance policy was on the hook for the rest.

Over and over, I saw cost reductions ranging from about 50 percent to 70 percent for my father’s outpatient care. My own private insurance never could come close to getting those kinds of contractual discounts.

Once, I asked a doctor how he could survive with such stingy payments, and he told me that Medicare pays all its bills and pays on time. That brought a substantial upside to it, he said. Aging adults also make up a large part of the patient base for many doctors and hospitals. There is strength in numbers.

Medicare is not perfect. Retirees must pair it with supplemental health insurance policies for maximum health coverage, which can be pricey. If you don’t have supplemental coverage, you could pay a lot out of pocket if you end with a hospital stay of several months or see doctors frequently. The Medicare prescription program is confusing and costs still can seem high.

Still, the benefits far outweigh the program’s weaknesses, but we could see that reversed under the GOP’s “A Better Way” health care plan.

It calls for a voucher-like system in which the government gives out subsidies to cover premiums, and retirees enter the private market for insurance. Premium costs likely would vary depending on where people live. Steep discounts for medical care that we are used to seeing likely would disappear in many parts of the U.S.

When you’re retired and on a fixed income, there is financial and emotional security in knowing you have a guaranteed set of benefits under Medicare. The GOP’s plan would eliminate that.

An architect of the GOP plan, Ryan, made the politically savvy move to propose keeping Americans 55 and older grandfathered in the current Medicare programs. They wouldn’t be subjected to something new. He’s guaranteed to get less resistance from retirees that way if his plan comes to a vote. It’s important to note, though, that AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, opposes the plan, citing concerns about rising costs that would hit future retirees.

Certainly, concerns about Medicare costs are legitimate. Americans are living longer and having fewer children to prop up retirees. The GOP wrote in its “A Better Way” plan that it worries about “a complex financial structure and projected spending growth that make the program unsustainable for the long term.”

They say their plan “ensures affordability by fixing the currently broken subsidy system and letting market competition work as a real check on widespread waste and skyrocketing health care costs.”

Yet, their plan is full of uncertainties for future retirees. And that should raise a lot of eyebrows.

It’s worth it for working Americans to fight now to keep the plan that guarantees to benefit us later.

Email: MarlenGarcia777@yahoo.com

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