The $4 Trillion Gamble. The Bush Medicare Option is not dead yet.

...Discussing entitlements, (click title to entry - thank you) he said the plan would change Medicare, the federal health care plan for seniors, by creating a "premium support" system that allows seniors "to pick the (private health) plan of their choosing, and then Medicare subsidizes that plan."...

The first new initiative annouced by Bush in 2004 was to provide $2 Trillion to change Medicare to private health care.

$2 Trillion.  Here we go again.

...Some of the ads (click here) say that the law means "seniors could lose their doctors" or that it "threatens seniors’ ability to keep their own doctor." But what the ads are talking about here has nothing to do with the new health care law. Some doctors have said they may stop accepting Medicare patients because of scheduled payment cuts set in motion by a 1997 law, cuts that are unaffected by the new statute....

The Affordable Care Act REMOVES "Medicare Advantage" to re-enroll participants into regular Medicare enrollment.  Why?  Because it saves the country money while protecting participants from exploitation of private insurance companies susceptible to fraud and potential bankruptcy no different than the banks.

...Although the ads cite an April report from the office of the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as support for this claim, that report actually discusses cuts the law makes in payments to other providers, such as hospitals and nursing homes – not doctors....

Then once it is privatized, in comes the elite practice of medicine the seniors will never be able to afford.  The 'concierge medicine' concept is a Regressive - Elite concept.  Just another bad idea.  The USA needs to stop this 'health care roller-coaster' and back the establishment of State Pools.

High-End Medical Option Prompts Medicare Worries (click here)

by The Associated Press

WASHINGTON

April 3, 2011, 12:17 am ET

...If concierge medicine goes beyond just a thriving niche, it could lead to a kind of insurance caste system.

"What we are looking at is the prospect of a more explicitly tiered system where people with money have a different kind of insurance relationship than most of the middle class, and where Medicare is no longer as universal as we would like it to be," said John Rother, policy director for AARP....