Tag Archives: medicare and medicaid

Lost

Leave a reply

My Comments: I’ve been a licensed insurance agent since sometime in 1976, or was it 1975? I have helped place hundreds, if not thousands, of insurance contracts over these many years, some of which I know are still in force.

This article is directed toward those who are dealing with elderly parents, some of whom are not as mentally alert or as strong as they once were. Time has a way of getting away from us and for those of you in middle age, this part of your future has a lot of challenges.

So I encourage you to approach your time with your parents, aunts and uncles, with the following circumstances in mind. You’ll be doing yourself a favor, not to mention minimizing stress for those afflicted.

By Kevin Sypniewski | March 20, 2013

When we hear something once, we might pay attention but when we hear the same thing from totally unrelated people, we begin to suspect there is a trend.

Some of the most enlightening and interesting professional conversations I’ve had recently have been with long-term care (LTC) claim departments. Okay, perhaps I should get out more!

Two different claim departments from two different leading LTC carriers tell me that they regularly get LTC claims submitted 12 or even 24 months after the claim event.

Why on earth would someone wait that long to receive the money for which they are entitled? Because the family just found the LTC policy!

The insured was ADL dependent but not communicative, and the family just “happened” to find the policy in a shoebox or file cabinet in the basement.

Have you ever been into the basement of the house that someone has lived in for 30 years and tried to find a specific file? It is wonderful that this policy got found and even more wonderful that the carriers are paying “late” claims, some of which they are no longer contractually obligated to pay.

What about the other LTC policies on other insureds that never get found?

If some get found, others surely do not get found!

We’ve had employees in our caregiving education and LTC sessions tell us about finding policies and others tell us about “knowing” mom bought one, but they never could find it once mom needed it.

We were hoping these were somewhat isolated incidences; however, after talking with leading LTC carriers, we know these are not isolated. If someone lapses their policy and takes the carrier “off the hook,” I’m okay with that.

That is their decision and certainly the carriers don’t mind. But knowing that families are paying premiums for the duration and the carrier gets a bye on the payment…That just stinks!

You as an insurance professional did your job selling the policy. The claimant did a smart thing buying the policy, but in the end the family loses a lifetime of assets and now the family home has a lien and the insured is on Medicaid in a Medicaid facility.

That is just not right! Sure, the policies that get found eventually get paid, but by then the assets might be gone, mom is in a Medicaid facility, and now the family gets the $200,000 check.

Better than nothing, but not for Mom.

I can hear the family discussion now. “I sure wish Mom had bought long-term care insurance because she really wants to remain at home in her house of 30 years.” She did buy the policy but just never told anyone, which is exactly like not buying a policy… just more expensive.

The carriers and regulators require we designate a third-party in case we don’t pay our premium. What about a third party to make sure we file our claim?

I think we have an obligation to communicate this story to each and every person we help with LTC insurance.

Perhaps we create our own third party notification memo that at the time of purchase the new policyholder is able to designate several people who get notified about the policy purchase.
Sure, those people may or may not be around 25 years later at claim time, but I certainly like the odds of that effort versus the strategy of hope.

Source: http://www.lifehealthpro.com/2013/03/20/lost?eNL=514a2b29150ba0161b0002ff&utm_source=LifeHealthProDaily&utm_medium=eNL&utm_campaign=LifeHealthPro_eNLs&_LID=1044219161

55 Billion Reasons for Consumer-Driven Care

Leave a reply

My Comments: While the election is over, and ObamaCare will not be repealed, there is still massive confusion and misunderstanding by all parties about what it all means for you and me as consumers of health care, and the doctors who look after us. Surveys suggest that doctors are very fearful that what had been a solid income earning profession is likely to become something very much less.

It is certainly likely that specialists are going to see a decline in income, while those in general practice are likely to see an increase. The forces at work that resulted in so much specialization was that there was more money to be made there. If you have the skills necessary to complete your residency, why stop at family care when you can become a specialist?

I’m very interested in this topic since it dovetails with a professional niche that I’m very much involved with. Go HERE for a glimpse of it. In the meantime, this article will help you sort through the variables as this issue gets pushed and pulled over the next ten years.

By Kathryn Mayer | BenefitsPro.com

In a report this week (SEP 7, 2012), we found out something we already knew—but probably not to this extent.

Our country’s health care system squanders a ridiculous $750 billion a year. That’s roughly 30 cents of every medical dollar spent. It happens through unneeded care, excessive administrative expenses and data, fraud and other problems, a report by the Institute of Medicine revealed.

Let’s go over some numbers. America spent $2.6 trillion on health care last year. And a third of that spending did nothing to make any of us any healthier. Our health care costs are rising faster than inflation, and it’s literally bankrupting many of us. It’s also killing us. By one estimate, the report says, roughly 75,000 deaths might have been averted in 2005 if every state had delivered care at the quality level of the best performing state.

So what the hell is going on?

The report breaks down the sources of overspending: Unnecessary services tops the list at $210 billion, followed by inefficiently delivered services ($130 billion), excessive administrative costs ($190 billion), prices that are simply too high ($105 billion), fraud ($75 billion) and missed prevention opportunities ($55 billion).

Though we’ve come a long way in health innovation—such as the management of previously fatal conditions—the report said, the American health care system is still falling short on “basic dimensions of quality, outcomes, costs and equity.”

Not that this is news. We know this. It’s apparent every time we see health report numbers or look at our own medical bills.

The question is what we can do about it.

The Institute of Medicine has recommendations: Fully adopt mobile technologies and electronic health records; increase transparency about the costs and outcomes of care; use better data; and move toward a system that rewards doctors for quality, not quantity, of care.

Sure, these are good ideas, but whether they’ll happen any time soon is really a mystery. Sadly, it’s out of consumers’ hands.

But preventive care isn’t. There’s something each of us can do—get checked, get necessary and recommended health screenings, eat healthy, exercise, don’t smoke, be proactive about problems—the list goes on. Older people, the report notes, have a big problem with preventive care, and it’s especially problematic because they’re more prone to serious and costly health woes.

It’s also worth noting that the report comes at an interesting time. The presidential race is tighter than anyone thought—and health reform and Medicare cuts are sources of major contention. President Obama didn’t even give mention the signature piece of his presidency, the PPACA, during his nomiation acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Seems like there’s a lot we—and Washington—can do to drastically cut health care costs while also improving care that doesn’t cost another trillion or so dollars to implement.

Health Costs to Double Under Romney Plan?

Leave a reply

My Comments: When I first saw this headline, I said to myself this cannot be right. And then when I saw it came from an organization that supports health care reform, I thought there had to be some bias here. And there may be, but…

As someone who cut their teeth in the insurance industry selling health insurance policies almost 40 years ago, I think I have some understanding of how health insurance works. And I’m a proponent of the Affordable Healthcare Act, not because I think it has no flaws, but because the problem needed some organization with enough leverage to cause reforms to happen to the health care delivery system in this country. That organization could only be the Federal Government.

I continue to be depressed by Romney’s about face on “RomneyCare”, the system he imposed on the State of Massachusetts. That state is the most financially stable state in the union. The per capita income is among the highest, if not the highest, among the 50 states. And they have a mandate that EVERYONE must participate in the program.

By Kathryn Mayer | September 28, 2012

Families buying non-group health insurance on their own in 2016 would pay nearly twice as much under the health proposals offered by presidential candidate Mitt Romney than under President Obama’s health reform law, a new report from Families USA claims.

Families USA is a prominent Washington, D.C.-based consumer advocacy group that supports health care reform.

Under Romney’s plan, families on average would pay $11,481 compared to $5,985 under Obama—a differential that includes comparative insurance premium payments as well as out-of-pocket costs paid by families when they receive health care, the report says.

The report uses national and state-by-state data to analyze and compare health care benefits and costs among three different plans: “RomneyCare” (the Massachusetts health law signed by then-Governor Mitt Romney in 2006), “ObamaCare” (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law in March 2010), and “RomneyCandidateCare,” the health care proposals of presidential candidate Romney.

While there are “significant” similarities between ObamaCare and RomneyCare, the substantial difference lies between Romney’s new health care proposals.

“ObamaCare and the Massachusetts-based RomneyCare, on the one hand, and RomneyCandidateCare, on the other hand, are as different as day and night,” says Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA.

Romney and running mate Paul Ryan have made the repeal and replacement of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act a top campaign goal.
Nationally, almost 42 million more Americans would lack health insurance without health reform, the report says, and those buying private insurance would pay almost twice as much under Romney than under Obama.

The group’s report also concluded that “RomneyCandidateCare” would “significantly” change Medicare by repealing benefits created by the PPACA.
Three health analysts who served as advisers on both the PPACA and Massachusetts health reform helped prepare the report.

The group’s report earned early backlash. The Romney camp called it “absurd,” while Forbes.com’s Avik Roy called the comparison “fatally flawed,” arguing the report makes inaccurate assumptions about Romney’s plan and doesn’t account for the PPACA’s tax hikes and Medicare cuts.

The Romney campaign said the report “assumes a fantasy world where Obamacare has actually worked. But Americans aren’t buying it. They’ve watched as provision after provision has failed, costs have skyrocketed, and Medicare has been cut by $716 billion. [The] report undermines the important health care debate our country should be having.”

The Medicaid Problem Grows and a (Partial) Solution Emerges

Leave a reply

My Comments: I ran across this article a few weeks ago. With the headline recently that Governor Scott was not going to comply with the directives toward the states and Medicaid, I thought it might be helpful to have a better understanding of the implications. The idea presented below is not a full answer, but every little bit helps.

Medicaid not only applies to the elderly, of which Florida has more than its share, but to the indigent population in general. Imagine you are 12 years old, living in Florida, and your parents, or parent as is often the case, has no money.

You get sick, or perhaps you were born with a problem, who pays for your care? As a society, we’ve said we are not simply going to let you wither and die; somehow you are going to be cared for. But there are costs associated with your care and those costs have to be covered.

You fall under the Federal and state rules that define Medicaid. And Governer Scott says that’s too bad; there’s not enough money and good luck.

Blog added by Chris Orestis on June 4, 2012

When Medicaid was created on July 30th, 1965, the entire GDP of the United States was $791.1 billion, and no one could have predicted that by 2009. the U.S. would spend over $2 trillion on health care in a single year.

Today, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all in the red and creating havoc for government budgets at the federal and state levels. According to Chairman Ben Bernanke, this has become the number one concern of the Federal Reserve about the U.S. economy.

State budgets have been impacted particularly hard by shrinking tax dollars and growing Medicaid enrollment brought on by the economic crisis and an aging population. Over 10 million Americans now require long-term care annually, and Medicaid is the primary source of coverage. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Medicaid spent $427 billion in 2011, almost doubling since spending $240 billion in 2009. Long term care providers prefer private pay patients over Medicaid recipients.

A new report released by the American Health Care Association (AHCA) indicates that due to major state budget deficits and adjustments to Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, long-term care facilities will see historically low Medicaid reimbursements. It is estimated that unreimbursed Medicaid funds to nursing homes exceeded $6.3 billion in 2011 – a $19.55 shortfall per patient, per day, on average. However…

Billions of dollars of in-force life insurance policies are regularly abandoned by uninformed seniors as they enter their “long term care years”. Because a life insurance policy is legally recognized as an asset of the policy owner, it is an unqualified asset and counts against them when applying for Medicaid. For Medicaid applicants, it has been standard practice to abandon a life insurance policy if it is within the legally required five year look back spend-down period. But now, it is possible to convert a life insurance policy instead of abandoning it, allowing the policy owner’s care to be covered as a private pay patient by a long-term care benefit plan over an extended time frame.

Converting a life insurance policy into a long-term care Assurance Benefit plan is a Medicaid qualified spend-down. Instead of abandoning the policy and going immediately onto Medicaid, the time a person remains private pay is extended while the present day value of the life insurance asset is spent down in a Medicaid-compliant fashion — all while preserving a portion of the death benefit for the family during the extended time period.

In January, 2012, the Center for Economic Forecasting and Analysis (CEFA) of Florida State University analyzed the tax savings impact of converting life insurance policies into long-term care benefit plans on the Florida Medicaid budget. In their analysis, CEFA scored the annual savings for Florida’s tax payers at approximately $150 million. The savings come from extending the time Medicaid applicants with a life insurance policy can remain private pay, delaying entry onto Medicaid by first converting their policy to a private, long-term care benefit account.

Six Possibilities for Health Reform

Leave a reply

My Comments: You’ve heard me tee off on this subject before. My hope is the Supreme Court decides it’s OK and leaves it alone. Following that potential outcome, political necessity will dictate adjustments and changes that will ultimately lead to a better solution than what we had before. But changes in how we approach health care in this country HAD to be made, and since I don’t trust the insurance industry to come up with answers, this is all we had left. And while I don’t trust the political elite, I have to assume they put my interests ahead of their own. Oh, WHAT? They don’t do that? Time to vote the bums out of office!

This article came from a magazine called BenefitsPro. It deals with that part of the financial services industry whose focus is employee benefits for corporations and small businesses. Financial industry magazines are typically conservative, hoping against hope that Mitt Romney will defeat Barrack Obama this fall. Every now and then there is a glimpse of reality, and this is one of them.

By Mark Sherman, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar June 18, 2012

WASHINGTON (AP) — Some are already anticipating the Supreme Court’s ruling on President Barack Obama’s health care law as the “decision of the century.” But the justices are unlikely to have the last word on America’s tangled efforts to address health care woes. The problems of high medical costs, widespread waste, and tens of millions of people without insurance will require Congress and the president to keep looking for answers, whether or not the Affordable Care Act passes the test of constitutionality.

Q: What if the Supreme Court upholds the law and finds Congress was within its authority to require most people to have health insurance or pay a penalty?
A: That would settle the legal argument, but not the political battle.

The clear winners if the law is upheld and allowed to take full effect would be uninsured people in the United States, estimated at more than 50 million.

Starting in 2014, most could get coverage through a mix of private insurance and Medicaid, a safety-net program. Republican-led states that have resisted creating health insurance markets under the law would face a scramble to comply, but the U.S. would get closer to other economically advanced countries that guarantee medical care for their citizens.

Republicans would keep trying to block the law. They will try to elect presidential candidate Mitt Romney, backed by a GOP House and Senate, and repeal the law, although their chances of repeal would seem to be diminished by the court’s endorsement.

Obama would feel the glow of vindication for his hard-fought health overhaul, but it might not last long even if he’s re-elected.

The nation still faces huge problems with health care costs, requiring major changes to Medicare that neither party has explained squarely to voters. Some backers of Obama’s law acknowledge it was only a first installment: Get most people covered, then deal with the harder problem of costs.

Q: On the other hand, what if the court strikes down the entire law?
A: Many people would applaud, polls suggest.

Taking down the law would kill a costly new federal entitlement before it has a chance to take root and develop a clamoring constituency, but that still would leave the problems of high costs, waste, and millions uninsured.

Some Republicans in Congress already are talking about passing anew the more popular pieces of the health law.
But the major GOP alternatives to Obama’s law would not cover nearly as many uninsured, and it’s unclear how much of a dent they would make in costs. Some liberals say Medicare-for-all, or government-run health insurance, will emerge as the only viable answer if Obama’s public-private approach fails.

People with health insurance could lose some ground as well. Employers and insurance companies would have no obligation to keep providing popular new benefits such as preventive care with no copayments and coverage for young adults until age 26 on a parent’s plan. Medicare recipients with high prescription drug costs could lose discounts averaging about $600.

Q: What happens if the court strikes down the individual insurance requirement, but leaves the rest of the Affordable Care Act in place?
A: Individuals would have no obligation to carry insurance, but insurers would remain bound by the law to accept applicants regardless of medical condition and limit what they charge their oldest and sickest customers.

Studies suggest premiums in the individual health insurance market would jump by 10 percent to 30 percent.
Experts debate whether or not that would trigger the collapse of the market for individuals and small businesses, or just make coverage even harder to afford than it is now. In any event, there would be risks to the health care system. Fewer people would sign up for coverage.

The insurance mandate was primarily a means to an end, a way to create a big pool of customers and allow premiums to remain affordable. Other forms of arm-twisting could be found, including limited enrollment periods and penalties for late sign-up, but such fixes would likely require congressional cooperation.

Unless there’s a political deal to fix it, the complicated legislation would get harder to carry out. Congressional Republicans say they will keep pushing for repeal.

Without the mandate, millions of uninsured low-income people still would get coverage through the law’s Medicaid expansion. The problem would be the 10 million to 15 million middle-class people expected to gain private insurance under the law. They would be eligible for federal subsidies, but premiums would get more expensive.

Taxes, Medicare cuts and penalties on employers not offering coverage would stay in place.

Q: What if the court strikes down the mandate and also invalidates the parts of the law that require insurance companies to cover people regardless of medical problems and that limit what they can charge older people?
A: Many fewer people would get covered, but the health insurance industry would avoid a dire financial hit.

Insurers could continue screening out people with a history of medical problems; diabetes patients or cancer survivors, for example.
That would prevent a sudden jump in premiums. But it would leave consumers with no assurance that they can get health insurance when they need it, which is a major problem that the law was intended to fix.

Obama administration lawyers say the insurance requirement goes hand in hand with the coverage guarantee and cap on premiums, and have asked the court to get rid of both if it finds the mandate to be unconstitutional.

One scenario sends shivers through the health care industry: The Supreme Court strikes down the mandate only, and delegates other courts to determine what else stays or goes.

Q: What happens if the court throws out only the expansion of the Medicaid program?
A: That severely would limit the law’s impact because roughly half of the more than 30 million people expected to gain insurance under the law would get it through the expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people.

But a potentially sizable number of those low-income people still might be eligible for government-subsidized private insurance under other provisions. Private coverage is more expensive to subsidize than Medicaid.

States suing to overturn the federal law argue that the Medicaid expansion comes with so many strings attached it amounts to an unconstitutional power grab by Washington. The administration says the federal government will pay virtually all the cost and that the expansion is no different from ones that states have accepted in the past.

Q: What happens if the court decides that the constitutional challenge is premature?
A: The wild card, and least conclusive outcome in the case, probably also is the most unlikely, based on what justices said during the arguments.
No justice seemed inclined to take this path, which involves the court’s consideration of a technical issue.

The federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., held that the challenge to the insurance requirement has to wait until people start paying the penalty for not purchasing insurance. The appeals court said it was bound by the federal Anti-Injunction Act, which says that federal courts may not hear challenges to taxes, or anything that looks like a tax, until after the taxes are paid.

So if the justices have trouble coming together on any of the other options they could simply punt.

The administration says it doesn’t want this result. Yet such a decision would allow it to continue putting the law in place, postponing any challenge until more of the benefits are being received. On the other hand, it might give Republicans more ammunition to press for repeal in the meantime.

The Health Care Crisis Explained (maybe…)

Leave a reply

Sometime in the next few weeks, the Supreme Court is supposed to render its verdict on the legislation passed in 2010, affectionately known as Obamacare. How it will come down from on high, I have no idea, but the blogs and messages I receive as a financial advisor are all over the map.

While I’m interested in this personally and to some degree professionally, I realize that readers of my blog probably don’t give a damn, unless they are somehow directly impacted by the few provisions of the law that catch the most attention.

But if you are a member of the voting public, and you have an interest in how all this evolves, both politically and from the perspective of your wallet, here is something I found that helps.

It was written by a Joe Miller and appeared on a daily newsletter called BenefitsPro. They publish with a target audience of insurance agents, and individuals in corporate America whose job is to manage benefit programs for employees.

Over the last 10 plus years, the United States Economy has seen 27 percent inflation. This means that if you had $1.00 in the year 2002, you would need $1.27 to purchase the same thing in 2012. Over the same period of time, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, insurance premiums have increased by 114 percent. 27 percent vs. 114 percent.

This difference has been referred to as the health care affordability gap. This gap has caused businesses to examine different ways to offset some of the pain of the ever-increasing insurance burden. Organizations have increased employee contributions, raised deductibles, increased co-pays and chosen lower quality plans. Still, no matter what measures they take to lessen the impact, insurance premiums have increased 87 percent when adjusted for inflation (114 to 27 percent).

While the affordability gap has been drastic for businesses, the employee has actually taken a heavier burden of the health care cost increases. Over the same 10 year period, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average worker contribution has increased by 147 percent; an inflation adjusted increase of 120 percent.

What you should take away from this is that this isn’t just a problem for business. Employees, meaning “us”, need to know that we should care about this issue because like the inflated cost of gas for our cars, insurance costs are eating into our budget and our retirement money more than ever.

There are many factors contributing to increased health care costs. Some, such as an aging population are inevitable and irreversible. Other factors are controllable decisions that people make every day. These include choices such as maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking and making conscious decisions of how to “spend your health care dollar.”

Each of us need to realize there is a direct correlation between our health risks, the insurance claims they incur and the insurance premiums that are then offered by the health insurers. The problem with this is that many of us don’t have the information we need or the education to make the best decisions and impact these numbers. And we’re generally pretty lazy.

We should be encouraging our employers to provide education as to how to make smart choices with our health plans. Some are providing this education in conjunction with consumer-driven health options. Most employers though, are either not doing enough to educate their employees, or are providing information that is confusing or hard to use.

The second level of help that we as employees need are programs designed to maintain or improve our health. Everyone knows smoking and obesity are bad for you. If the information alone changed behavior, we’d have a perfectly healthy population.

MedMal Insurance – How to Get Your Premiums Back

Leave a reply

Last month I posted a blog entitled “Malpractice Insurance – The Financial Black Hole”. The “black hole” analogy is that regardless of how well you practice medicine, and have few or no claims against you, those premium dollars are gone forever. Over a career in medicine, that can be a huge sum. Well, not anymore.

I practice finance in the State of Florida. The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation publishes an annual report, the latest of which is entitled 2011 Annual Report – October 1, 2011. This document summarizes the medical malpractice insurance market in Florida and the following numbers come from this report.

In 2010, total earned premiums paid in Florida for Medical Malpractice Insurance totaled $559,038,326. Direct losses incurred were approximately $140,000,000. Much of the difference was used to pay 1) Agent commissions and brokerage fees; 2) Taxes and licensing fees; and 3) Defense cost containment. 23 companies licensed in Florida accounted for 80% of the above earned premiums.

The report also states that “the average countrywide return on surplus for Florida’s leading medical malpractice writers was 12.2% in 2010, which represents the seventh consecutive year of profitability.” And yes, the premiums for coverage in the State of Florida are trending downward, but premiums in the $40,000 – $60,000 range per year are still considered normal.

While no one disputes the need for this coverage, no one, until recently, has figured out how to reward those insureds whose practice habits largely preclude claims and as a result, have and maintain a stellar record as their medical career unfolds. Until now.

You can purchase a medical malpractice insurance policy, with coverage similar to what you have now, at a similar price, from Physicians Benefit Resources Risk Retention Group. This company is currently approved to sell medical malpractice insurance coverage to physicians in 14 states, one of which is Florida. As one of those RRGs referenced earlier, it has the ability to be registered in any of the 50 states where there is a demand for coverage.

Many of us don’t have much extra time to explore alternative options; we’re used to paying these premiums and they are largely invisible. So I created a short web video called The Six Minute Solution. If you can find six minutes, you’ll know at the end of this video whether or not you want to know more. You can forward it to someone on your administrative staff and tell them to call me or to send me an email. I’ll put together, at no cost to you, a feasibility study for you to review. Click on this image:

Future of Medicare Up for Debate

Leave a reply

Workers approaching retirement — and many current retirees — should plan to sock away more money for future health care costs.

My Comment: This article appeared five months ago, long before the curent matter before the Supreme Court took center stage. I’m holding my breath about what those folks on the bench are going to do about the health outcomes my children and grandchildren are going to face. Its a nail biter and it comes down to one or two, non-elected people appointed to the Supreme Court.

I spent time the other day with a long time friend who argued passionately that the Supreme Court should overturn the whole thing. After all, she said, why should she be subject to a 3% federal sales tax on the proceeds from the sale of their house? As a financial advisor, this was news to me so I Googled it. The first item was a detailed report that there is a 3.8% excise tax on profits from the sale of a house where the profit exceeds $500,000 and the seller and her spouse have earnings in excess of $250,000.

I asked her if she minded that her children and grandchildren would have to continue to pay more for their health insurance so someone in the top 2% of wage earners could avoid paying $3800 of additional tax when they sold their house and had a $600,000 profit. She had no answer. Personally, I’d rather everyone contribute something for their health insurance instead of me having to pay for mine and for someone else I’ve never met.

By Susan B. Garland, Editor, Kiplinger’s Retirement Report

Used to be, it was politically dangerous to try to tinker with Medicare. Former Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt lost the support of key Democrats in his bid for the 1988 presidential nomination when he talked about means-testing Medicare and other entitlements. And the 1988 Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act, which would have significantly expanded coverage, was repealed soon after passage. The reason: Terrified lawmakers capitulated to furious higher-income seniors who were to be charged higher premiums than other beneficiaries.

Lawmakers and politicians don’t seem quite as scared these days. Sure, seniors may still be shouting “Don’t Touch My Medicare!” at town hall meetings. But as the federal budget deficit widens, the White House and congressional lawmakers in both parties are becoming bolder in calling for cutbacks in the popular health care program for the elderly. Some recommendations for Medicare cuts that would have been considered heresy a few years ago are now moving to the center of public debate.

Finish reading it HERE…

Senior Finances and the Great Entitlements Debate

Leave a reply

My Comment: A great number of my clients are now retired or soon will be. Part of that is a function of my age and the fact that I’ve been a financial planner and investment advisor for over 37 years.

The political and economic landscape has changed significantly over these years and it’s always a challenge to separate what was inevitable from what exists as a result of decisions made by those in power years ago. Entitlements and how they have affected attitudes among our electorate will strongly influence the next round of elections, and by extension, the financial security of so many of us. My role is to find the best possible solutions for those who ask my help. Arriving at those solutions involves as complete an understanding as possible of the forces that will influence our lives going forward. This is one of them.

By Philip Moeller | U.S.News & World Report LP – Mon, Jan 23, 2012 11:47 AM EST

The Great Entitlements Debate will move into high gear this year. The need to rein in government healthcare spending on Medicare and Medicaid is undeniable. But there is no political consensus over how severe the cuts should be or how quickly they should be implemented. There is also a related debate about Social Security. Its financial impact on U.S. deficits is, depending on how you measure it, either nonexistent or modest, at least compared with healthcare.

During these discussions, the financial welfare of older Americans is likely to be a centerpiece issue. The nation’s rising sensitivity to income and wealth inequalities is not limited to the 1 percent versus the 99 percent. Are older generations sucking unfair amounts of money and wealth from the government and, at least indirectly, from younger generations? Or are they struggling with meager retirements, rising healthcare costs, and dismal futures? Here are some of the central studies and viewpoints that will be rolled out again and again as weapons.

Finish the article HERE…