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Patients Would Pay More if Romney Restores Medicare Savings, Analysts Say
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| Parent(s) |
Candidate
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Aug 22, 2012 10:57am |
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| Category | Analysis |
| Author | JACKIE CALMES |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Times |
| News Date | Tuesday, August 21, 2012 04:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The 2010 health care law cut Medicare reimbursements to hospitals and insurers, not benefits for older Americans, by that amount over the coming decade. But repealing the savings, policy analysts say, would hasten the insolvency of Medicare by eight years — to 2016, the final year of the next presidential term, from 2024.
Marilyn Moon, vice president and director of the health program at the American Institutes for Research, calculated that restoring the $716 billion in Medicare savings would increase premiums and co-payments for beneficiaries by $342 a year on average over the next decade; in 2022, the average increase would be $577.
Beneficiaries, through their premiums and co-payments, share the cost of Medicare with the government. If Medicare’s costs increase — for instance, by raising payments to health care providers — so, too, do beneficiaries’ contributions.
And those costs would be on top of the costs involved with a full repeal of the health care law, which would eliminate expanded coverage of prescription drugs, free wellness care and preventive checkups. |
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