Trudy's Devilish Details

CJR's Trudy Liebermann brings a fine piece of information to the health care debate - and wonders why we weren't talking about it earlier:

[Health Care Reform] will require the National Association of Insurance Commissions (NAIC), the group of state regulators that writes rules for insurance companies, to come up with new requirements for the most popular Medicare supplement policies, Plan C and Plan F. These policies are purchased by close to 60 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries who have supplemental coverage, including gobs of people living in South Florida. The idea behind this change is to make these Medicare supplements cover less and require seniors to pay more for their coverage—in other words, shift more of the cost of medical care to them.

The theory is that if seniors have to pay more, they won’t go to the doctor as often. “More cost sharing is the continued triumph of the unholy alliance between the academic economists, policy wonks, and the Republicans who think that health care costs so much because people have too much insurance,” says Bruce Vladeck, former Medicare administrator and now a senior adviser at the Greater New York Hospital Association.

...Nobody is talking much about this potential expense for seniors, who will feel the financial pinch beginning in 2015—a date that those retiring in the next few years should keep in mind as they embark on their planning. That, to us, suggests some good consumer stories down the road.

Why did this provision slip through virtually undetected by the media? Were their heads too wrapped up in the donut hole, along with the political spin from Dems and Republicans about helping all those folks on Medicare? I asked a top official at the AARP, who replied: “We are conflicted so we have chosen not to comment. I think seniors will be unhappy, and it won’t affect utilization at all.” In other words, seniors will still go to the doctor—they’ll just have to shell out more to cover the bill.

Now wouldn't that have been a fine discussion to have in the debates? Instead we were treated to shouts of "Socialism!" and fanciful notions of Death Panels.

Seniors paying more is never something that plays well - and I'd be interested to know why this perfectly valid criticism wasn't given more play and substance by the opposition.