Let seniors keep their private insurance

By SUE BLEVINS

One of the most important issues policy-makers will need to address when they debate health-care reform is patient freedom of choice, especially for America’s oldest citizens.

Many people do not realize it but government regulations severely penalize seniors who wish to keep their private health insurance, rather than enrolling in Medicare Part A, the government hospital insurance program, upon turning age 65. Little-known administrative policies adopted by the government in 1993 and strengthened in 2002 say that seniors can’t refuse Part A coverage unless they give up their Social Security benefits. Adding insult to injury, once enrolled in the program, the only way seniors can withdraw from it is to repay all Social Security benefits they received, as well as any hospitalization benefits Medicare paid on their behalf.

To some, the controversy might appear to be much ado about little. After all, how many seniors want to pay for health coverage when Medicare is willing to pick up the tab?

In fact, a growing number of seniors want to continue their private health coverage instead of Medicare, and they should not be penalized for doing so because federal bureaucrats have decided they shouldn’t.

Just as many parents choose to send children to private schools, though they pay taxes to support the “free” public education system, seniors should have the right to opt out of Medicare and pay privately for their health care.

There are many reasons to bypass Medicare beyond the simple fact that individuals simply should have this right.

For example, Medicare limits what services are available to seniors and denies payment for many claims. The Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals, for instance, reports that 10 percent of the approximately 1 billion Medicare claims that government contractors process annually are denied.

Also, some seniors are serious about maintaining a confidential doctor-patient relationship, something more than the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 provides. Yet, Medicare claims routinely are reviewed by numerous sets of eyes, including outside contractors that help process the claims — hardly conducive to privacy.

Medicare was not intended to be forced upon seniors. When Medicare was created in 1965, Congress promised that the program would not interfere with seniors’ freedom to purchase and use private health insurance. That law, which remains unchanged, clearly says that “nothing contained in this title shall be construed to preclude ... any individual from purchasing or otherwise securing, protection against the cost of any health services.” Yet, over the years the program has been regulated into becoming more of a trap than a safety net.

Retirement benefits

Government officials have no authority to strip seniors of the retirement benefits to which they are legally entitled simply because those seniors want the freedom to manage their own health care.

Hopefully the courts will end this abuse. Former federal employee Brian Hall and four other plaintiffs in Hall v. Leavitt, a lawsuit filed this past October, have asked the courts to strike down the government’s arbitrary and improper policies. The plaintiffs aren’t asking the government to refund the taxes they paid during their working years to finance Medicare. They simply want the right to say no to an entitlement “benefit” they don’t want; they want the right to make their own health care choices and pay for what they want; and they want their Social Security benefits without being forced into Medicare.

The court should easily recognize that the law is on the plaintiffs’ side.

X Sue Blevins is president of the Institute for Health Freedom, Washington, D.C., and author of “Medicare’s Midlife Crisis” (Cato Institute, 2001); Web site: www.forhealthfreedom.org. The Institute for Health Freedom does not receive funding from the health-care industry. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.