GOP Medicare Proposal Doesn’t Work Like Members of Congress’ Health Care As Republicans Claim
The Center for American Progress has previously pointed out that the House Republican budget for fiscal year 2012 forces future beneficiaries out of Medicare into more expensive private plans. One of the ways Republicans are trying to sell their Medicare proposal is by claiming that beneficiaries would “be enrolled in the same kind of health-care program that members of Congress enjoy.” That claim is false. In fact, if the rate of growth under this Medicare proposal were applied to federal employees’ most popular health option, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Standard Option, federal workers, including members of Congress, with family coverage would have to pay another $3,330 for the care they enjoy today. Those with individual coverage would have to pay another $1,555.
Most federal workers receive their health coverage through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan, or FEHBP. The government contributes a portion of their health premium. That portion is set by law and applied to the weighted average of actual premiums charged in any given year. Beneficiaries make up the rest of the cost.
The Republican budget replaces the traditional fee-for-service Medicare for future beneficiaries with a voucher to private insurance companies that is established on very different terms. Unlike FEHBP, which has a consistent government contribution based on actual premiums charged in any given year, the amount of the voucher is determined independent of actual premiums. Its growth is instead tied to the rate of the consumer price index for all urban consumers, or CPI-U. Because health costs have typically increased faster than inflation, the level of government support from the voucher would become a lower share of actual premium costs over time. In other words, Medicare beneficiaries would be left holding the bag.
What would happen if FEHBP operated like the GOP Medicare proposal?
We examined what would happen if FEHBP had operated like the Republican Medicare proposal over the last decade. We used data from the Office of Personnel and Management to look at the annual premiums for federal workers enrolled in the Blue Cross Blue Shield Service Benefit Plan (Standard Family and Standard Individual). We chose this plan because nearly 60 percent of those enrolled in FEHBP have Blue Cross Blue Shield, and the Standard Option is the most popular FEHBP plan. We increased government support for the individual and family plans by the rate of growth in the CPI-U index from 2002 to 2011. We then compared the difference between the government’s share and the actual total premium in each year—which is the amount the beneficiary would pay—under the Republican proposal and the real FEHBP.
The result: A typical federal worker, or member of Congress, enrolled in family coverage in the Blue Cross Blue Shield Standard Option, would have had to pay an additional $3,330.36 for the same level of coverage they have today. Those with individual coverage would have had to pay $1,555 more.
By: Nicole Cafarella, Payment Reform Manager and Policy Analyst and Tony Clark, Policy Analyst, Center for American Progress, April 27, 2011
Governor Walker’s Misleading Claims On Medicaid
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker painted a misleading picture of Medicaid in his New York Times op-ed on Friday. Medicaid is neither obsolete nor inflexible and changing it to a block grant, as the House Republican budget that Walker supports would do, would significantly harm the millions of seniors, people with disabilities and children who rely on it every day.
Governor Walker says Medicaid is obsolete because it is biased toward covering people in nursing homes rather than their own homes. In fact, Medicaid is moving in precisely the opposite direction. In 1990, just 13 percent of Medicaid spending on long-term care went for care in the community rather than in an institution. By 2009, the figure was 43 percent. That’s a great example of how Medicaid is changing with the times.
Moreover, health reform, (i.e., the Affordable Care Act) provides several new options to speed this trend along and continues funding for the “Money Follows the Person” program, in particular, which moves people from nursing homes back to the community. With health reform’s new options and funding, progress will likely continue. That won’t happen under the House Republican budget plan, which would sharply reduce funding for Medicaid and convert the program to a block grant.
My colleagues, Edwin Park and Matt Broaddus, have shown how risky a block grant is for states. If the House Republican block grant proposal had been in place starting in 2000, their analysis shows, in 2009 Wisconsin would have received 40 percent less in federal funds – nearly $1.6 billion in that year alone. With such a sharp drop in federal funds, the state would have been ill-equipped to deal with a recession or even to meet the ongoing needs of an aging population.
Governor Walker claims the success of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and state Medicaid demonstration projects show that states could do well under a Medicaid block grant, but he’s wrong on both counts:
CHIP, which does operate under a structure similar to a block grant, has a narrower purpose than Medicaid, as noted in a recent brief from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. It covers far fewer children than Medicaid and covers children in families with higher incomes. Moreover, in the past, some state CHIP programs did run short of funds and had to freeze enrollment and set up waiting lists.
As to Medicaid demonstration projects, they allow states to cover people who are ordinarily not eligible for Medicaid (such as low-income, childless adults) or services that aren’t usually covered (such as short-term, or “respite,” care for families with children with complex medical conditions) as long as they don’t spend more federal funds than they otherwise would have received. This is nothing like the Ryan block grant, which would slash the federal funds that states would otherwise get to help them run their programs, not hold federal funds steady.
By: Judy Solomon, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, April 25, 2011
We Don’t Have A Spending Problem, We Have A Fraud Problem
Conservatives seem to have a knack for changing the subject whenever their backs are up against the wall. Over the last several weeks, there has been an orchestrated chorus by the House Republicans in particular to define the so-called “deficit problem” in terms of a wild spending binge by the federal government and the Obama administration. They seem to have easily forgotten who got us into this mess in the first place. That aside, everyone from Speaker John Boehner to Sen Mitch McConnell have been bellowing throughout the halls of Congress and at every available microphone that “We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem”.
It’s amazing how we all have bought into this line. The media, in its usual rush to get a headline or sound bite, immediately picked up this line and has been the waterboys for the GOP by enabling this hoax on the American people. The focus in most circles has been on spending cuts. Well, we need to re-characterize what is actually going on here. We don’t have a spending problem..we have a fraud problem.
This fraud has been played on the American people by an ideologically depraved Republican party for at least the last ten years. They have made everybody believe that if we just make the wealthy wealthier, somewhere down the road, we will all benefit. There would be job creation with full employment, small businesses would thrive, home prices would fall, gas would cost less than two dollars a gallon and there would be a chicken in every pot. And we believed it hook, line and sinker. Now we are back to square one. None of these things have happened except the fact that we have indeed made the wealthy wealthier. In 2010, the 400 Americans with the highest adjusted gross revenue incomes averaged $345 million. The average federal income tax was 17%, down from 26% in 1992. The income gap just keeps getting wider. Why does this continue to happen? Because we let it happen.
Just last week, Standard and Poor’s accentuated the Republican clarion that the sky is falling. This call comes from the same S&P who supported every toxic waste subprime security under the sky, the same S&P who sold its ratings to the highest bidder. Regulators have also assisted the GOP in their fraud. The Office of the Currency has gone out of its way to protect its clients, ie the banks. Efforts to reign in the banks and stop their predatory loan practices have been foiled at every turn. Even the banks are too big to fail. Profits for banks, corporations, CEO’s, Wall St and the wealthy just keep soaring. There is a lot of back scratching going on here, by and for a lot of wealthy people.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, all of these wealthy people are trying to figure out a way to take the spot light off themselves. They are beginning to see that they may not be able to stave off demands any longer that they pay their fare share. People who have been adversely affected for so many years are now demanding that this fraud be stopped. Teachers and other low wage earners, the poor, seniors, students and union members have all come to believe that they have sacrificed enough. Even some tea party members are beginning to see the light.
For too many years, the Republicans and their wealthy friends have had their hands in everybody’s pockets. Your pocket was the revenue stream for them. General Electric and the Koch Brothers were probably happier than anyone. The Republicans were also happy because their happy friends provided the cover that allows them to do whatever they want to in terms of policy. Being the ideologues that they are, this protection gives them unimpeded opportunity to push forward with their agenda, from dissolving women’s rights, overturning the Affordable Care Act, union busting, replacing Medicare with vouchers and completely eliminating any sense of environmental protection just to name a few. With happy and contented wealthy backers behind you for so many years, how could you go wrong. My, how things are changing.
The revenue stream that the Republicans have depended on for so long is now drying up…that stream is you. They are finding that when they put their hands in your pockets now, they are feeling the seam of the sewn pocket. There just isn’t any more money there. They become flushed and filled with extreme panic, finally realizing that they are going to have their taxes raised after all these years. Their backs are against the wall. So what do they do now? Change the debate..”Let’s raise taxes on everybody”. Nice try!
It’s well past time that shared sacrifice mean exactly what it says. It is no longer acceptable that the poor, under privileged, seniors and the disenfranchised continue to carry the load for corporations, Wall St and their deadbeat tax-evading friends. No, let’s not raise taxes on everybody. Let’s end the fraud and insist that the wealthy start paying taxes just like everyone else. This being Easter Sunday, this may be a good symbolic time to increase taxes only for the rich. We should leave that rate in place for oh say, the next 40 years. Besides, they have accumulated a fair amount of wealth over the years and should easily be able to live off that profit during that time. Perhaps take a trip or two or just wander around the world enjoying their spoils. We will pledge to re-visit this issue after that time. If, and only if, the middle class has reached a level playing field, then we can talk about lowering the tax rate for the wealthy. I think Moses and the Pharaoh’s would be happy with this compromise. So it is written, so let it be done.
By: raemd95, mykeystrokes.com, April 24, 2011
GOP: Playing “Dangerous Games” With The Debt Limit
The debt limit is supposed to make Congress think twice before passing tax cuts or spending increases that add to the national debt. Instead, lawmakers routinely support policies without paying for them — like the Bush-era tax cuts and two wars — and then posture and protest when their decisions require raising the debt limit.
So it will be once Congress returns from its spring recess. The debt limit — $14.3 trillion — will be hit as early as mid-May. If it is not raised in time, the government will have to use increasingly unorthodox tactics to meet its obligations, which would disrupt the financial markets and the economic recovery.
Default is theoretically possible, though public outrage over the mess would likely compel Congress to raise the debt limit before then. The best approach, the most sensible and mature, would be to pass a clean and timely increase.
However, nothing sensible or mature is on the horizon. Republicans have vowed to extract more heedless spending cuts in exchange for their votes to raise the debt limit. To that end, they seem likely to demand changes to the budget process, like a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, or spending caps.
Such reforms have a glib appeal — who can oppose something as prudent-sounding as balanced budgets? In fact, they are a dodge, because they cut spending broadly without lawmakers having to defend specific cuts. They are also often wired to block tax increases, without which deficit reduction efforts are not only unfair, but also will not succeed.
Take, for example, the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution that Senate Republicans recently endorsed. By rigidly requiring a balanced budget each year, it would deepen recessions by forcing tax increases or spending cuts in a weak economy.
Worse, the amendment would hold annual spending to 18 percent of the previous year’s gross domestic product, a formula that works out to about 16.7 percent in the proposal’s early years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. That is a level last seen in 1956 — a time before Medicare, before the interstate highways, when many baby boomers were not yet born, never mind aging into retirement.
Sharply lower spending would, in turn, allow for big tax cuts. Those tax cuts would be virtually irreversible, since the amendment calls for a two-thirds vote of both houses to raise taxes.
Another bad idea is the spending cap proposed by two senators, Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, and Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri. It would cap spending at around 21 percent of G.D.P., compared with about 24 percent now — which would require deep cuts like those in the House Republican budget plan. With its emphasis on spending cuts, the cap also seems intended to reduce the deficit without tax increases.
In the successful deficit reduction efforts of 1990 and 1993, budget process reforms were helpful. The key, however, was to first enact credible deficit-reduction packages — with spending cuts and tax increases — and then impose rules, like pay-as-you-go, to prevent backsliding. Process reforms alone avoid the hard work. Still, they can exert powerful political pull.
The White House and Congressional Democrats must not allow themselves to be taken hostage again.
By: The New York Times, Editorial, April 22, 2011
Republicans’ 2012 Slogan: It’s Anything But The Economy, Stupid
The GOP has turned one of the most effective slogans in American political history on its head. The Republican rallying cry for 2012 will be “Anything but the economy, stupid.” Let’s see how that works out for them next year.
Last year Republican leader John Boehner promised Americans that his party’s priority would be fixing the economy and creating jobs if voters gave the GOP control of the House of Representatives. Republican House candidates echoed their leader’s call to focus on the economy like a laser beam. This year, they have done almost everything but. Two of the first three bills introduced by House Republicans at the start of the 112th Congress in January were designed to take away a woman’s right to choose. One of them, H.R. 3, would have allowed abortion only in cases of “forcible” rape. Like there’s some other kind.
Then there was the battle in the first week of April that almost led to the shutdown of the U.S. government and the end of all programs to create jobs. What was the GOP hang-up on waiting till the last hour to avoid the debacle? Concern that the budget wasn’t doing enough to create jobs? No. The issue that the GOP pushed in the negotiations until the very end was defunding programs at Planned Parenthood designed to limit the number of abortions.
But that’s not all Republicans are doing to create jobs. Tuesday, Speaker Boehner hired a lawyer at $520 an hour to defend an unconstitutional law, the Defense of Marriage Act. The law passed in 1994 defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman. President Obama wisely decided not to waste any money defending the law because it’s clearly unconstitutional. The 10th Amendment reserves the power to regulate marriages to the states. So much for wasteful government spending and states’ rights. But at least the GOP has created one good paying job.
Meanwhile, the religious right is busy attacking a conservative potential GOP presidential candidate, Mitch Daniels. He is the governor of Indiana and former director of the Office of Management and Budget. Daniels angered religious conservatives because he had the nerve to say economic issues are more important than social issues. The religious right feels anyone like Daniels who short changes social issues is either a heretic, a lunatic, or both. Yes, the Taliban wing of the Republican Party believes that persecuting gays is more important than creating jobs. Good luck trying to sell that message to the millions of Americans who are one paycheck away from bankruptcy. If they are lucky enough to have a paycheck.
When Republicans go down to ignominious defeat in 2012, they will have only themselves to blame.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and Worl Report, April 21, 2011
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