The press may be starting to pick up this new way of talking about vouchers, framed around competition and choice, and passing it on. The Knoxville News Sentinel reported in December, for example, when Corker introduced his bill, that “its details include reforming Medicare to include competition from private health-care options” without offering details of its own what that would mean. That’s journalistically weak. Who would be hurt or helped? No clue.
Vouchers are the vehicle for essentially changing Medicare from social insurance to private insurance. That may be the game plan. James Capretta, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, argued to Sanger-Katz that both parties will eventually embrace the concept—whatever it’s called.
What about the public? Through the years, polls have varied widely in public opinion on the idea of vouchers, says the Kaiser Family Foundation. But late last year, it reported that during 2012, polls agreed that support for the status quo—keeping Medicare as social insurance without vouchers and more privatization—outweighed support for change. But, Kaiser cautioned, “whichever party can most effectively communicate its argument to the public may win the public’s support.”
The war of words is on, and the press needs to be on it too.
The Second Opinion, CJR’s healthcare desk, is part of our United States Project on the coverage of politics and policy. Follow @USProjectCJR for more posts from this author and the rest of the United States Project team. And follow Trudy Lieberman @Trudy_Lieberman.
Related stories:
Medicare Uncovered: Parsing Sen. Corker’s big bill
Medicare Uncovered: The pain from ‘skin in the game’
An election post-mortem on Medicare coverage
Your argument is totally one-sided and fails to expose how the Obama Administration is shifting more costs to seniors through ACA policies. The reality is that the national economic situation requires tightening the belt. The ACA is chomping down pretty hard. The Republicans are suggesting a different method of doing the same thing. You don't have to like it, but at least be bold enough to report both sides of the story, including how ACA is making drastic cuts to Medicare Advantage, a move that is expected to harm seniors in 2014.
#1 Posted by David Bynon, CJR on Fri 1 Mar 2013 at 08:29 AM
Re your comments: Currently, private insurers provide the prescription drug benefit for all beneficiaries, and they also provide all Medicare benefits for million or so Americans who have chosen Medicare Advantage plans.
Unfortunately, what you are stating is absolutely untrue.
You need to do more research on how Advantage and Prescriptions plans actually work in the real world. Advantage plans and the prescription plans are plans that establish private insurers as actually sub-contractors to the Federal Government for servicing of Medicare, primarily for processing payments. The sub-contractors have contracts with the Federal Government to provide varying plans based on fixed contracts with the Fed, for specific annual payments by the Fed to the private insurance companies. It is a complex and very profitable system, based on fees and profit/expense margins based on Medicare demand. The paybacks from the Fed are setup to private insurance companies based on actual medicare payouts per demographic makeup of varying counties, and regions within the US. The Medicare Program, and not the private insurance company is still paying the basic medicare costs of the insured individual.
Why perpetuate convenient and superficial dis-information that continues supporting ignorance in the general public debate platforms? How do you think a few individuals in Congress have made so much personal profit based on Medicare contracts between their private insurance corporations and the Fed? What do you think is the major contributing factor to escalating cost for health insurance in the US compared to a good number of European developed nations?
#2 Posted by lisa , CJR on Tue 5 Mar 2013 at 12:17 PM