If-You-Like-The-Plan-You-Are-In-You-Can-Keep-It Surprise of the Day
One out of every five seniors with stand-alone drug plans will lose their current plan:
The analysis by Avalere Health, a leading private research firm, estimated that more than 3 million beneficiaries will see their prescription plan eliminated as part of a new effort by Medicare to winnow down duplicative coverage and offer consumers more meaningful choices. Seniors would not lose coverage, but they could see changes in their premiums and copayments…
As many as 3.7 million Medicare recipients may have to switch, the analysis concluded. That amounts to about 20 percent of the 17.5 million enrolled in stand-alone drug plans.
Amazing.
Only the government could state “offer more meaningful choices” as a code for fewer choices. I suppose that preventing drug plans from offering more than one basic plan is meant to reduce adverse selection. This is just the beginning. The private insurance “exchanges” will look just like this.
What is also appalling is the government’s accusing Avalere of “guessing.” Coming hard on the news that Senator Baucus believes that actually reading the bill was beneath him, what could the politicians who voted for this bill be doing, other than guessing, when they trumpet ObamaCare’s benefits?
John, this is the bureaucratic mentality. They want to regulate everybody’s life. Tell everyone what to do.
I am surprised that people are surprised over this development. We have known for a long time that political claims about the effects of legislation are designed to get support from an uninformed public which will in turn urge their representatives to pass the legislation. The relationship between what is promised and what is likely to develop is generally non-existent-this mean that our leaders lie. Only later do the unaware find out that the claims are not grounded in reality. No wonder we are cynical about the political process.
In regard to Larry’s comment -sadly this mentality is not limited to bureaucratic mentality. Read F. Hayek on the Road to Serfdom and see that political leaders are to blame.
I don’t understand the reasoning that seniors’ advocates have that too much choice somehow adversely affects seniors by confusing them. Advocates want to narrow the choices to a dozen or so standardized plans based on the premise that if the plans are homogeneous the purveyors will be more likely to compete on price. I believe that is too simplistic a view.