Peter Amadio, M.D., a Mayo Clinic orthopedic surgeon, discusses the U.S. Senate proposal to make people age 55-64 eligible to purchase Medicare coverage, and why this proposal will make the health care system worse, not better:
Dr. Amadio will be discussing concerns of Mayo Clinic and other health care providers with Neil Cavuto at 4:20 p.m. EST today on the Fox News Channel.
3 Comments
Good info in this video. Question – why does Mayo use a simple talking head for this? Why not make it more visually attractive? (Not being critical, wondering if you have some research to move you in this direction.)
Is it fair to compare the costs of Medicare to the federal employees’ private plans? Private insurers have an advantage in that they insure the relatively young and healthy, knowing that the older and more costly customers will be taken up by Medicare.
Thank you for your comments. I am one of the moderators for this blog, responding to Mark.
Comparing Medicare to plans offered by large employers offers a comparison worth noting in the current debate. A 2008 study by commissioned by the Kaiser Family Foundation titled “How Does the Benefit Value of Medicare Compare to the Benefit Value of Typical Large Employer Plans?” examined aspects of this issue in detail. The report “compares the value of benefits for the average age 65+ Medicare beneficiary and for beneficiaries with three distinct health care utilization profiles: relatively healthy beneficiaries, beneficiaries who are in moderate health, and those who are in relatively poor health. For this analysis, high-cost users include the top 20 percent of utilizers, moderate-cost users include the average for the next quintile (22 percent), and low-cost users are defined as the average among all others who comprise the bottom 58% of beneficiaries. The findings presented in this paper represent the average benefit value for participants in each of these groups. ”
Report findings indicate that “Medicare …pays a smaller share of total costs associated with covered benefits, on average, than the typical large employer PPO or the FEHBP standard option. In 2007, Medicare pays 74 percent of costs associated with covered benefits for an individual with average health care costs ($14,270), while the typical large employer PPO pays 85 percent of total costs and the FEHBP standard plan covers 83 percent of the total cost.”
The report authors also found that “The benefit value of Medicare in 2007, including the prescription drug benefit, is lower than the value of either the typical large employer PPO or the FEHBP standard benefit option.” The report went on to state “Medicare is less generous, on average, than the comparison employer plans because it has higher cost-sharing it has higher cost-sharing forinpatient care under Part A (particularly for relatively short hospital stays), no out-of-pocket limit on services provided under Part B, and less generous drug coverage under the standard Part D benefit. In addition, large employers typically provide some dental coverage while Medicare does not generally cover dental care.8 Including dental in the total value of the benefit package, as we do in this analysis, further reduces the value of Medicare compared to employer plans. However, a similar picture would emerge even if dental benefits were excluded.”