Medicare Budget Cuts

Question

Please be sure and cite as many sources as possible. The research paper is on medicare budget cuts.

Answer

Medicare Cuts

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) also known as Obama Care is a legislative reform that is directed towards healthcare and health insurance in the US (Jacobs, 2011). It seeks to include new benefits and rights, expand coverage, access and make it more affordable to senior citizens. Medicare helps to cover specific areas: Part A/ Hospital Insurance, Part B/Medical Insurance, Part C/ Medicare Advantage Plans and Part D/ Prescription Drug Coverage. The Medicare cuts under the new reforms were meant to reduce overpayments to the hospitals and redirect these funds to the senior citizens (Rabecs, 2006).

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Under Obama care, the Medicare cuts were estimated at over $700 billion. Initially, this was taken as a negative strategy that would derail this program. Contrary to this expectation, it became clear that these cuts would actually serve to reduce fraud and overspending within health and insurance and refocus this money on improving the quality and accessibility of health especially for the senior population whose health security had been previously compromised.

Interestingly, with the new incoming government, Medicare is balancing out on an unsure position.  The Republicans are determined to reorganize Medicare and completely obliterate Obama Care which has been suggested to have vast negative effects on health in the country and different health insurance programs. The main idea is a complete transformation that will remodel Medicare as premium support or privatization as the Democrats call it (Frakt, Pizer and Feldman, 2006).

Medicare has been evaluated as being on its path to bankruptcy. Obama Care which is suggested to have created negative influences on Medicare has in fact prolonged the Part A component to nine years in financial sustainability (Dranove, 2008). As the president elect and the Republicans adjust to take up government in 2017, there is extreme worry on Social Security and Medicare being cut (Lynch, 2011).

On one hand, president Elect-Trump had promised not to cut the two programs to which millions of Americans had invested and contributed to for many years. However, the Republicans have been very vocal about their intention to cut Medicare and replace it with a privatized alternative. Millions of Americans are now worried of the extreme influence that the Republicans could have on this decision despite the fact that Trump pledged to retain the programs. The suggested and most applicable strategy would be a gradual move by raising the eligibility age and providing seniors with a fixed amount to purchase health insurance on the private insurance market.

The biggest concern is that privatization of Medicare would lock out ordinary citizens on the affordability front. This appears to be a setback considering that in combination with Obama Care, it has brought more people under compulsory health coverage. Despite these benefits, it is obvious that Medicare is not financially sustainable on a long term scale (Lynch, 2011). There has been a gradual increase on the financial pressure being imposed on this program and its inability to cope with these demands. The biggest fear is that even if this program is retained, it will not be able to provide quality and cover that will suit these senior citizens.

Alongside this major cut, the program has been undergoing successive cuts for the last four years. These cuts have led to a difficulty in balancing the cost of providing care alongside the decreasing reimbursement. The immediate consequences of this is cutting staff salaries and reducing the number of visits a patient is allocated with their health providers (Dranove, 2008).

Medicare has served many senior Americans since the 1960s. It has provided health security to a substantial group of people despite its shortcomings. Despite the budgetary cuts and the looming program cut, all the stake holders must tackle different challenges singly and in order. For most, it seems to be in order to tackle the shortcomings of Obama care. This Act encompasses all other covers and should be prioritized in terms of reform. In truth, these cuts have indeed improved the quality of service to the patients and reduced the level of fraud in health institutions.

References

 Frakt, A, Pizer, F and Feldman, R. (2012). The Effects of Market Structure and Payment Rate on the Entry of Private Health Plans into the Medicare Market. Inquiry, 49 (1).

Dranove, D. (2008). Code Red: An Economist Explains How to Revive the HealthcareSystem without destroying It. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Jacobs, J. (2011). Medicare. Sannta Barbara: Greenwood.

Lynch, F. (2011). One Nation under AARP: The Fight over Medicare, Social Security and America’s Future. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Rabecs, R. (2006). Health Care Fraud under the New Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Program. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 96 (2).