If Sanders becomes president, it won’t be the end of the world. I can see single-payor working, but there should always be the option of buying different levels of supplements for it. Not everyone who is already covered with their plan of choice (which will ostensibly “go away” with single-payor) wants to wait 4-6 months to get in to see a certain practitioner (or their regular doctor) or wait months/weeks to get a certain kind of scan to find out what is wrong with them! I fear long waiting times to get into the see the most experienced, competent providers under a single-payor system.
I agree. But there are already waiting lines to see providers in the US. My aunt had to wait months to get her insurapigs to pay for a PET scan, as well as for the appointment itself.
Perhaps the fucking filth were hoping she’d kick off from cancer before they had to pay more.[/quote]Is your aunt on Medicare, spdrun? If so, the likely reason she is having to wait so long is because Medicare funds were diverted to help pay subsidies for people under the age of 65 so they can get help paying for marketplace plans off the Federal and state exchanges. Essentially, the Federal gubment robbed Peter to pay (a much younger) Paul and stripped the over-65 set of reliable MC Part A services which were promised to them all of their lives.
. . . I’ve read that the Affordable Care Act cut Medicare by $716 billion. Where are the cuts being made?
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that Medicare spending would be reduced by $716 billion over 10 years, mainly because the law puts the brakes on annual increases in Medicare reimbursement for Medicare Advantage, hospital costs, home health services, hospices and skilled nursing services. Hospitals have to absorb most of the reductions, about $260 billion over 10 years. Medicare Advantage will receive about $156 billion less.
Other cuts include $66 billion less for home health, $39 billion less for skilled nursing services and $17 billion less for hospice care — all by 2022.
Medicare costs will still grow, just more slowly than they would without the ACA. But some experts predict that beneficiaries will feel the impact. “The notion that you can take $700 billion out of Medicare reimbursements and not think you will see some impact over time is ridiculous,” says economist Gail Wilensky, who directed Medicare and Medicaid in the George H.W. Bush administration and is a senior fellow with Project HOPE, an international health foundation.
But Henry J. Aaron of the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank, insists that “the ACA is unalloyed good news” for Medicare beneficiaries because it improves the financial health of Medicare Part A, the hospital insurance program . . .
