The Medicare Debate, Part II

It barely made a blip on the news, so you may not have heard that the U.S. credit rating was just downgraded again for the fourth time in the past fourteen months. Downgrades are dangerous because they signal to other countries that the U.S. is now a riskier place to invest in, and this raises our cost of borrowing money. But the bigger problem for Americans is the reason for the downgrades: our government is less likely to pay its debts, and is therefore less likely to honor its commitments to people who are counting on government assistance in their senior years.

One of our biggest obligations is Medicare. It's the third-most expensive federal program ($560 billion spent in 2011, or about $3000 per working-age adult¹), and due to the wave of retiring baby boomers its cost is expected to nearly double within a generation.² Our current path is unsustainable — and will result in millions of people shelling out more for their medical care than they've been planning on.

So what do we do about it? The status quo approach is to cut costs by reducing pay for doctors who treat Medicare patients...but this would also reduce the quality of care (see my last post). VP candidate Paul Ryan has an alternative plan, one that's been both attacked and championed by people who probably don't really understand it. (I know — I was one of them.) But now that I've read his plan, here's what you need to know:

Nothing changes for anyone currently 55 or older.

For everyone else, when you become eligible for Medicare you will choose your own health insurance plan. You can choose the traditional fee-for-service option (the way it is now, where government reimburses doctors directly), or you can select from among a variety of private insurance plans within the new Medicare Exchange.

Every year, each insurer in the Exchange will declare the price that they must be paid in premiums in order for them to cover enrollees' medical costs. Medicare then pays for all or some of your premiums depending on your income and the price of your plan.

The "benchmark" that determines how much Medicare pays for is the price of the baseline plan, which is either traditional fee-for-service or the second-cheapest private plan, whichever is cheaper. But what's not clear is what "benchmark" means — that is, if you choose the baseline plan, are your premiums fully covered or not? What is clear is that of the people who select the baseline plan, Medicaid-eligible seniors will have no out-of-pocket expenses, other low-income seniors will receive additional assistance, and high-income seniors will have to pay a share of their premiums.

If you choose a plan that's more expensive than the baseline, you'll have to cover the difference. Choose a plan cheaper than the baseline and you'll receive a rebate for the difference.

Each insurer in the Exchange must abide by two ground rules. First, they have to cover at least the actuarial equivalent of the fee-for-service benefits package. This means that while each plan will provide different coverage, every plan's coverage will be at least as valuable as traditional Medicare and you'll know upfront what's included in your plan. Second, they have to accept all applicants regardless of any high-risk/pre-existing conditions. Medicare will support this provision by paying for the increase in premiums that's necessary for high-risk individuals and by regularly transferring money from plans with more low-risk seniors to plans with more high-risk seniors.

The vision here is to have companies compete for customers by thinking of creative and efficient ways to cover medical expenses for less than it costs Medicare to do so today. If this plan fails and the anticipated cost reductions don't pan out, there's a provision to cap Medicare expenditure growth at nominal GDP growth plus 0.5 percent. This means that if insurance prices rise faster than that upper growth rate, some seniors (Medicaid-eligibles excluded) would have to cover the spillover costs. Whatever the merits, this is a more truthful way of dealing with ballooning costs than trying in vain to hide the problem from seniors by paying doctors less.

No plan will magically wipe away the underlying problem of having an increasingly strapped government provide for an aging population...but applying the tried-and-true principles of competition and personal choice/responsibility is a step in the right direction.

1. There were 183.9 million U.S. adults ages 20-64 in 2009.
2. Peter G. Peterson Foundation. "Budget Explainer: Medicare."

The Medicare Debate, Part I

Turn on your TV and I bet you'll hear one of the Presidential candidates claim that if we elect the other guy, Medicare patients are bound to suffer. You'll hear Romney allege that Obama took $700 billion out of Medicare to pay for Obamacare.

It's true: Obamacare comes with a $716 billion reduction in government's Medicare expenditures over the next 10 years. The majority of these cuts will reduce how much doctors and insurance companies will be reimbursed for the care that they provide/fund.

But there's a perception out there that since these cuts are made to providers, they won't affect patients. A recent Reuters article "Top Six Myths about Medicare" says that the cuts to providers are "mostly meaningless to patients." In National Journal's "10 Things You Need To Know About The Medicare Debate", Thing #1 reads: "President Obama's cuts to Medicare do not affect any benefits." And a Washington Post analysis says "there's one area these cuts don't touch: Medicare benefits."

One of the most important medical benefits people have is the ability to be seen by a doctor when in need. Arbitrarily cutting pay for doctors could certainly impact this benefit.

If a doctor's pay per patient is reduced, he'd need to cram in more patients per day in order to earn as much as before. This trend would leave fewer available doctors for people with urgent medical needs. Some doctors would look to avoid Medicare patients altogether. A 2010 American Medical Association survey of doctors attests to this.

The broader issue here is the unwillingness of some to consider or even acknowledge the existence of unintended consequences of government intervention. And if we can disagree about the effects of this one small aspect of Obamacare, imagine what other unforeseen consequences lie within its 2,700 pages.

In my next post I'll analyze Paul Ryan's proposal for Medicare. I skimmed it the other day and it's more complicated than either side would have you believe.

Making Money

The piercing tone from his clock radio is his signal to stumble out of bed, collect himself, and get ready to face another day at work. Shower, breakfast, coffee, commute. He plans the day ahead, then spends it working hard — making tradeoffs, meeting deadlines, and trying to find some value in those unavoidable meetings. He closes up shop and drives home, eager to finally spend some time with the people who mean the most to him. And at the end of it all he lands in bed, ready or not to hit repeat.

The more money he makes during his days — and the more he’s made throughout his life — the more likely he is to hear politicians clamor for him to pay his fair share back to society. Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren recently sounded off about the need for the most successful businessmen to pay their fair share in taxes, declaring, “You built a factory and turned it into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless, keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Putting aside the fact that high earners already do pay a large share of their earnings in taxes, Warren’s point and those like it overlook the reality that a person making money is in itself a benefit to society.

The vast majority of people who make money do so only because they’ve delivered goods or services of comparable value. Both parties — employer and employee — benefit from the exchange, and each side’s gain ultimately extends to society at large. An employee’s ability to meet his employer’s needs leaves the employer free to focus on growing the business in order to tackle the needs of potential new customers. This dynamic helps those folks whose needs will now be met as well as those who will be hired to fill new positions in the growing business. In addition, the wealth amassed over the course of a person’s career won’t just be spent on yachts and palaces but also invested back into the economy, spurring the growth of existing businesses and the creation of new ones. As John F. Kennedy famously put it, “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

The wealthiest among us are in this way already contributing the most to society, and those contributions have little to do with taxes.

During a 2010 financial reform event in Illinois, President Obama said, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

I say you can’t get enough of a good thing.