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Senior Citizen Opinions & Analysis
President Obama’s Budget Puts Focus of Medicare Back
Where It Should Be
‘In recent years Medicare has become a cash cow for
insurance companies’
By Paul Precht, Medicare
Rights Center
Director of Policy and Communications
 March
2, 2009 - The budget proposed by President Obama redirects
the focus of Medicare spending back where it belongs - the efficient
delivery of high-quality health care to America’s older adults and
people with disabilities.
In recent years, Medicare has become a cash cow for
insurance companies, providing taxpayer subsidies that far exceed the
cost of providing coverage through Original Medicare.
The President’s budget finally ends that bonanza,
even as it takes administrative action to ensure people enrolled in
Medicare private health plans receive decent benefits.
The savings from increasing the efficiency and
quality of Medicare provide a down payment toward covering the tens of
millions of uninsured Americans, including the 1.5 million people with
disabilities who must wait two years for Medicare coverage to begin.*
The Medicare Rights Center looks forward to working
with the Obama administration to ensure that savings generated from its
Medicare proposals are also used to make cost-effective improvements to
the coverage received by people with Medicare, particularly those living
on limited incomes.
* For more information about the two-year
waiting period for people with disabilities,
click here.
Medicare Rights Center is a national,
not-for-profit consumer service organization that works to ensure access
to affordable health care for older adults and people with disabilities
through counseling and advocacy, educational programs, and public policy
initiatives.
www.medicarerights.org
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