Well, I thought I had seen it all when it comes to government, but recently I discovered a dirty little secret of Medicare. You know Medicare, that sacred cow of the government that no politician dares to touch. Here's where my outrage comes from. I have a client who is turning 65 this year. He is REQUIRED to sign up for Medicare. If he doesn't he will be penalized later, so he has to sign up. His cost is $110 a month and he's not on Social Security so he will write Medicare a check every quarter. In addition to Medicare he was flooded with various offers of "free" add on health insurance. Wow, free insurance that was offered by almost every health insurer you could think of. So he signs up at no cost to him. But he later finds out that the government, yes our good old federal government, is paying the health insurers $800 per month for his "free" health insurance. Now put all of this into perspective. Between this guy and the taxpayers he is getting a $910 per month health insurance policy for a single individual. I did check to see if this guys information is correct and sadly it is correct. Now I pay about $400 a month for some pretty good coverage for my single employees but the government is managing to spend twice that amount. I don't know if the cost of the add on is the same across the country, but it is an additional $800 per month here in Western NY. Now don't you feel better about Medicare to know that your tax dollars are going to a bloated insurance company. So tell me, do you think this is a system that needs to be changed?
I don't know, tm.... You're obviously aware that you get reduced premium rates, due to it being a group plan. I'm wondering what the avg. policy costs the average SIXTY-FIVE YR OLD, not on a group plan. If I knew that figure, I'd be more or less inclined to be pissed....lol.
rdubnpk It is not necessarily true that a group policy brings you reduced rates. The rates are based on the age of all employees. If the group consists of a majority of young people, the rate would be low, but not as low as an individual policy would be for a youthful person in good health through, for instance, Blue Cross/Blue Shield individual. If the group is older, the premiums can get extremely high. The reason is that maternity is paid through a group policy (affecting mostly the youthful group) and pre-existing conditions are paid through a group policy ( affecting mainly the older group, sometimes after a year's elimination period). Neither is usually covered under an individual policy and both can be extremely expensive propositions.
We pay just slightly more than that for a family plan for our employees. A good solid family plan is about $1200 and I don't think, and granted I don't know this for a fact, but I don't think that a family with three or four kids would use just a third more in health services than a 65 year old. I deal with taxes constantly but I was never aware that the health insurance companies get paid a pretty hefty amount and noone is aware of it. Did anyone out there know that this was occurring? I sure as hell didn't and I'll bet I'm not alone.
rdubnpk I think we all realize government waste is rampant. We have handed them a checkbook full of blank checks with no oversight whatsoever. We are now paying the price for our negligence and naivette.
I agree with the waste issue, but I had no idea that taxpayers were funding such a whopping part of Medicare. What makes it even more hard to swallow is that the media is just going on and on that Medicare will be gutted. How about just making it a little less wasteful?
What are you guys talking about? Medicare is just a government payment system- the money goes to the private doctors, hospitals and clinics that provide the medical services- at a rate that is so low many providers complain about it. Where's the waste, when compared to health care paid for by insurance companies, with their very high overhead for advertising and admin, not to mention the cut that constitutes their profit, none of which is applied to providing medical services.
V, the money goes to not only the doctors but also to the insurance companies. I had never heard of the additional $800 a month payment that goes to the insurance companies for their "free" insurance. Health care has gotten to be just a massive ripoff of the taxpayers to enrich someone else. The system worked relatively well until the government got involved and the HMO's evolved. There are those that would say that people live longer so the system is working. Maybe people could live even longer if the system was accountable and their tax dollars were spent in a fashion that makes sense.
rdubnpk It occured to me this morning that Congress, whom we have entrusted with our hard earned money for decades, has made a total mess of EVERYTHING. We elect leaders with the expectation that they will lead us in the right direction and all they have done is lead us to the poor house. How did everything go so wrong?
Shouldn't we attempt to confirm this kind of statement, and perhaps get further details, before accepting it as true and passing it on? And, by the way, isn't this what Rep Ryan is suggesting doing, with his recommendations we subsidize payments to private insurance companies with public funds? Medicare, a publicly funded payment system which pays out based on claims submitted to it by private doctors, hospitals and clinics, does something no insurance company was willing to do, offer a very broad range of medical services- without exclusions, riders, or extra cost for those who reach 65 with pre-existing conditions. ______________________
