Kaiser Health News
August 27, 2010
Groups Press Congress To End Patients' Wait For Medicare
By Jessica Marcy
Under federal rules, most people with disabilities who are younger than 65 aren't eligible for Medicare until more than two years after they qualify for Social Security disability income. A coalition of more than 65 organizations led by the Medicare Rights Center has been pushing Congress to do away with the waiting period. But the effort has stalled because of the high cost to the federal government – an estimated $113 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That takes into account a $32 billion reduction in federal spending on Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor and the disabled. Many people with disabilities go on Medicaid while they wait to become eligible for Medicare.
When Medicare expanded in 1972 to cover the disabled, Congress created the waiting period to help control costs and ensure that only people with severe, ongoing disabilities received coverage. About 17 percent of Medicare's total 47 million beneficiaries – just over 8 million people in 2010 – receive disability benefits, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Still, the patient groups are pushing to end the Medicare waiting period because many people may still need government help. Currently, nearly 39 percent of patients are uninsured for at least some of the time during the Medicare two-year waiting period while 26 percent have no insurance for the entire time.
Discarding the Medicare waiting period "is always going to be an issue in Congress," said Edmund Haislmaier, senior health policy research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. "Some of it is money, some of it is politics, too. For members of Congress, irrespective of party or where they stand on the issue, it's kind of all-or-nothing because if they did it for some diseases, then they're immediately going to be inundated with 'Why didn't you do it for us?'"
Joseph Antos, health care policy scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said that a total elimination of the waiting period was not going to happen. "Across the board eliminating the two years just doesn't seem practical," he said. "This really is a money issue."
Comment: When Congress expanded Medicare to cover individuals under 65 with long-term disabilities, they specified a two year waiting period to be certain that only those with truly permanent disabilities would be admitted to the program. Obviously this creates a hardship for precisely those for whom the eligibility was established. Will the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) adequately address this injustice?
PPACA did not include any adjustments in the two year waiting period. Consequently different groups representing specific chronic disorders are lobbying for exceptions to the two year wait. Even if some of these groups achieve legislative success, it will not help the others who must wait the two years.
Since many lose their insurance and their income during that two year wait, some may become eligible for the expanded Medicaid program. Yesterday's message explained how Medicaid may leave those with chronic disorders underinsured with impaired outcomes, so this is certainly not a satisfactory solution. Besides, many with inadequate incomes may still fall above the threshold for Medicaid eligibility.
For those who lose their insurance during the two year wait, the individual mandate would require that they purchase private plans. Even with premium subsidies, these plans may still not be affordable. Besides, their low actuarial values will not provide adequate protection for these individuals with high health care costs, even with out-of-pocket spending subsidies.
PPACA included the CLASS Act (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act) designed to provide long-term care insurance. Though you might think that this provides an out, there are significant problems with CLASS. The program is voluntary and the individual must pay premiums for five years before benefits are available. That alone will exclude those with modest incomes who might consider the premiums to be unaffordable, especially for a program they can't use for five years and may never need. Furthermore, the benefits are anticipated to be quite meager and likely will provide only a modest daily cash benefit. The CLASS Act will not fulfill the insurance need for the two year gap.
The comments from the representatives of the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute describe the real hurdles: politics and money. It's not that we can't find the money, but the anti-government politics of today is driven by the philosophy that the government has been drained dry so that no funds are available. That is ridiculous. Our national health expenditures are already adequate, but the funds are inequitably and inefficiently distributed. We need more government involvement, not less, in providing stewardship over our health care funds.
The two year waiting period is yet one more example of the profound injustices inherent in our fragmented, dysfunctional health care financing system - a unsound and iniquitous system perpetuated by Congress through the enactment of PPACA. All of this evil nonsense would go away if they instead would enact a single payer, improved Medicare for all.
No comments:
Post a Comment