GOP Medicare plan is DOA

Opinion: May 25, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

By Rep. JOHN CONYERS Jr.

McClatchy-Tribune

WASHINGTON

Medicare is arguably one of the nation’s most successful and cherished public insurance programs. The program covers 47 million elderly and disabled Americans, and helps pay for hospital, physician visits and prescription drugs. It is truly hard to argue with success.

The traditional Medicare program, coupled with a supplemental private insurance policy, covers most of our seniors’ medical bills, with far less co-pays and out-of- pocket costs than private insurance.

Therefore, proposals to privatize Medicare — like Rep. Paul Ryan’s — have been met with such fierce opposition, because it was revealed in the national media that privatization meant much higher out-of-pocket costs for seniors. National polls have shown strong general support for maintaining Medicare or even increasing funding for it.

However, Medicare costs are projected to increase from $519 billion per year in 2010 to $929 billion in 2020.

The simplistic argument we often hear from conservatives is that Medicare is a costly federal government program because all federal government programs are inefficient and therefore costly. According to their line of reasoning, privatization is the only way to save money.

The truth is that there are several other ways to strengthen Medicare, but there has been a false debate in the nation regarding the rising costs of Medicare.

Key concept

This may be partly due to not understanding a fundamentally key concept regarding current health-care policy — there are no effective cost-containment mechanisms in place to control the private market costs of prescription drug costs, corporate hospitals and medical technology which are the main drivers of Medicare costs.

Research by respected economist Dean Baker shows that the federal government and Medicare beneficiaries would save $600 billion between 2006 and 2013 if Medicare were allowed to directly negotiate prices with pharmaceutical manufacturers.

One study by Families USA found that the Veterans Administration was able to negotiate substantially lower prices for the top 20 drugs used by seniors, compared to private Medicare part D plans.

It would only make sense for there to be bipartisan support for Medicare to be able to use the full faith and credit of the federal government and be able to negotiate down the rising costs of prescription drugs.

According to Forbes magazine, hospital charges represent about one-third of total health-care spending — $718 billion altogether. Twenty-four hospitals in this country with more than 200 beds make an operating margin of 25 percent or more — a profit margin that compares favorably to drug giants like Pfizer, and easily beats the operating profit margin that General Electric reported in 2009.

We can no longer continue to have America’s hospitals make these kinds of large profit margins, when the health of our senior citizens and the fiscal health of our nation are at stake.

America must transition to a non-profit improved Medicare-For-All program, if we are to have any chance of realistically containing overall health-care costs. That’s why I have reintroduced H.R. 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare For All Act, that would provide for a single-payer health-care system, providing all Americans with health-care coverage.

Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.