A Guide to Medicare Reform Proposals heritage.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from heritage.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Whatever merits one may ascribe to the recently enacted Medicarelaw, it has aggravated, not controlled, rapidly rising Medicarecosts. Its major feature is a massive entitlement expansion, but italso embodies some bad health care policy: There is no need for thefederal government to displace existing drug coverage, pre-empt newprivate-sector options, or accelerate the loss of employer-baseddrug coverage.
medicare advantage plans as well. meanwhile, these costs may go up. we heard the president coming out making his apology. look, we ll work to make sure you can keep some of your health care plans. if they re not removed from you, one of the things the president didn t mention, the cost of the plans that you re currently worrying about losing now may go up as a result of this. in fact, the ceo, her name is karen ignani, she is the ceo of ahip. she says, changing the rules after the health plans have met the requirements of the law could destabilize the market. due to these changes, fewer younger and healthier people don t purchase it, premiums will increase and there will be fewer prices for consumers. this is a rude awakening for insurance companies that were for obama care. the law requires people to buy
insurance plans that have been canceled, now he wants them to come back in order to keep that commitment, but he basically says these are junk plans that writ on by and large, for e the most part. when you hear the president of the united states say that about your health insurance plans, these individual health insurance plans, what s your response? well, my response is that people are buying in the market what they have chosen to purchase. that s number one. on 1-1-14, what people are able to purchase changes dramatically. it s different from what they have purchased today. so those are the rules. the plans have followed those rules and i think it s very important now for us to look at the implications of what changes have been made. this is by no means a done deal. you got a lot of work to do. karen, thanks very much. thanks, wolf. up next, more on the president s remarkable news conference today. did he say enough, is it too late to recover? our political experts are standi
already rejecting the president s plan. the insurance commissioner in washington state says it s too late right now. he says his state will stay the course. almost 300,000 washington state residents will have to get new policies. a top insurance industry trade association says the president s fix could actually destabilize the insurance market. karen ignani is joining us right now, chief executive officer of the american health insurance industry, chief representative here in washington. thanks very much for coming in. thanks, wolf. do you agree with what the president said today? well, we have some concerns about today and essentially what it boils down to is this is changing the rules in the ninth inning of the baseball game. the reason is that what the plans have already submitted their premiums with the expectation that there s a mix of older and younger people, healthy and sick, to balance the pools so that we can have affordable rates for consumers.