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News Release Archive | medicare | Accuracy.Org

Medicare Anniversary

July 31, 2012

This weeks marks the 47th anniversary of Medicare.

STEFFIE WOODHANDLER, swoolhandler at challiance.org
also, via Mark Almberg, mark at pnhp.org, pnhp.org
Woolhandler is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. She said today: “We celebrate Medicare which, along with Social Security, has lifted millions of America’s elderly out of poverty. We need to improve Medicare and expand it to everyone, not cut it back.

“In fact, Medicare stands like a rock in a troubled sea of waste, inefficiency and disarray in the rest of our health care system, dominated as it is by big, corporate insurers whose paramount goal is to maximize profits, often by enrolling the healthy, avoiding the sick, raising premiums and denying claims.

“Medicare is not without its problems, of course. Its benefits package could be richer. It lacks authority to negotiate lower prices with drug companies. The reimbursement rate to physicians could be enhanced and stabilized, instead of depending on an annual cat-and-mouse game with Congress over a flawed accounting formula that only erodes physician confidence in the program.

“But the best way to remedy these problems — and to bring down skyrocketing health care costs at the same time — is to improve the program and, most important, to expand it to cover every person in the United States.”

Tagged With: medicare, Medicare 47th Anniversary, Medicare Expansion, Physicians for a National Health Program,

Judges Not Debating Their Own Health Care

March 28, 2012

KAREN HIGGINS via Charles Idelson, cidelson at nationalnursesunited.org, or Carl Ginsburg, press at calnurses.org
With nearly half the Supreme Court justices who will pass judgment on the 2010 healthcare law beyond the age where they have to worry about their access to basic care, a leading voice for nurses said today that “all Americans should have the same level of security about their health.”

Higgins is a registered nurse and co-president of National Nurses United. Today she said: “For these judges, that means no concerns about being bankrupted by medical bills, denied needed treatment because some insurance agent deemed it ‘experimental’ or ‘not medically necessary,’ barred from choosing the provider of their choice because they were ‘out of network’ or forced to keep an unwanted job to maintain their present employer-paid coverage.”

“That guarantee could be achieved by extending Medicare, for which four of the nine judges already qualify, to everyone, without raising constitutional questions posed by the individual mandate that forces everyone without coverage to buy private, commercial health insurance” said the 170,000-member National Nurses United in a statement today.

Higgins added: “The Obama administration and Congress could have pre-empted the legal fight over their law by instead just expanding Medicare, a more humane, cost effective system which has no constitutional questions, to everyone under 65.

“Even now, Congress and the President could pre-empt an adverse court ruling by passing Medicare-for-all legislation currently in Congress, S 915 and HR 1200, and end our healthcare nightmare once and for all.”

Filed Under: Tagged With: healthcare, Karen Higgins, medicare,

* Medicare * Real Deficit “Courage”

April 13, 2011

STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER, M.D., MARGARET FLOWERS, M.D.
Woolhandler, a professor of public health at CUNY and visiting professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, is a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. She said today: “Congressman Ryan promises to save money by ending Medicare and instead giving seniors a voucher to pay for private insurance. But this scheme only saves money by leaving seniors to pay a larger and larger share of the premiums out of their own pockets — something few can afford. This unraveling of Medicare would return us to the bad old days before Medicare when most seniors couldn’t get the care they needed. And his plan for Medicaid mirrors this turn-the-clock-back approach. As in the 1950s, he’d give states limited block grants to care for the poor — grants that weren’t (and won’t be) tied to the actual cost of that care. If his plan is implemented, thousands will die; seniors unable to afford the miracles of modern medicine, and the poor denied even the most basic level of care.” Flowers is a congressional fellow at PNHP and recently wrote the piece “Ryan turns knife on Medicare, Medicaid.”

THOMAS FERGUSON
Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a senior fellow of the Roosevelt Institute. He said today: “As we await the President’s plan for the deficit and the next round of the Congressional follies on the debt ceiling, we had all better remind ourselves of a few basic facts. Firstly, in America’s polarized money-driven political system, the politicians who just voted a two year extension of the Bush tax cuts for the super rich aren’t showing ‘courage’ when they try to gut Medicare and Medicaid and deprive Americans of access to basic health care — they are just rewarding contributors. Real courage would lead Congress and the President to change the law to allow the the government to bargain with Big Pharma over drug prices and enforce anti-trust laws on hospital chains, testing laboratories, and medical practices that are forming ‘networks’ with even more market power. Secondly, no matter how many politicians and experts claim the opposite, it’s obvious from the last Trustees’ Report that Social Security is not going broke and doesn’t need fixing for decades, if ever.

“If you are seriously concerned with the deficit, it cannot make sense to repeat the errors of the Great Depression and keep chopping government expenditures at a moment when states are cutting back and banks and corporations are still trying to dig themselves out of past debts. But cheer up — there is a silver lining: With polls showing that even many Tea Party members want Social Security left alone, there is hope that lawmakers who respond to money and blankly ignore the will of the people will get exactly what they deserve in the 2012 elections.”

Recent interviews with Ferguson: huffingtonpost.com and video on The Real News

Recent papers by Ferguson: “A World Upside Down? Deficit Fantasies in the Great Recession”

“Legislators Never Bowl Alone: Big Money, Mass Media, and the Polarization of Congress” [PDF]

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Filed Under: Tagged With: deficit, medicaid, medicare, social security,

Equal Pay Day: Obama to Back Cuts Hurting Women?

April 12, 2011

TERRY O’NEILL, via Lisa Bennett
O’Neill is president of the National Organization for Women. She said this morning: “Today we mark Equal Pay Day, which occurs at a pivotal time for U.S. workers, particularly women. As feminists call attention to the persistent gender wage gap, we would do well to demonstrate its link to the various ways government and big business are breeding economic injustice in this nation.

“Tomorrow, President Barack Obama will offer his deficit-reduction plan for the 2012 budget cycle. Will he stand with women? Or will he, in the name of misguided ‘compromise’ with extremists, support cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security?

“Currently, women are paid 77 cents on the dollar compared to men. Women workers — full-time, year-round workers, mind you — have been stuck making between 70 and 80 percent of male salaries for two decades now. Equal Pay Day is a vivid reminder of this inequity — it illustrates how far into the new year the average woman must work in order to catch up with what the average man was paid in the previous year. It’s important to note that women of color’s salaries, compounded by race-based discrimination, lag even further behind the average.

“The wage gap makes women especially dependent on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These programs keep millions of middle-class women out of poverty — just one of the reasons a majority of voters strongly support these programs.

“The Republicans’ 2012 budget, introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, would voucherize Medicare, block-grant Medicaid and cut Social Security benefits, all in order to pay for increased tax breaks for corporations and multimillionaires.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Filed Under: Tagged With: equal pay, medicaid, medicare,

Taxes on Rich: Public vs. Government

January 5, 2011

Poll on TaxesDAVID LINDORFF
Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist, author and founder of the online newspaper ThisCantBeHappening.net. He just wrote the piece “A Profound and Jarring Disconnect,” which states: “According to the latest poll conducted by CBS ’60 Minutes’ and the magazine Vanity Fair, 61 percent of Americans want to raise taxes on the wealthy as the primary way to cut the budget [deficit]. The same poll finds that the second most popular first choice for cutting the nation’s budget deficit, at 20 percent, is cutting the military budget. That is, 81 percent of us — four out of five — would cut the deficit by taxing the rich and/or slashing military spending.

“Only 4 percent of those polled favored cutting Medicare, the government-run program that provides health care for the elderly and disabled, and only 3 percent favored cutting Social Security. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Tagged With: medicare, military spending, public opinion, social security, taxes,