Medicare Changing...

The story that I read, "How health care overhaul could change Medicare," explains how the congress plans on changing things up with health care, and indirectly, effecting Medicare and the elders. The lawmakers have five different proposals, and each of them can affect the seniors in a number of ways. One of the proposals is potentially cutting back on Medicare Advantage, which about 10 million elders are covered by. This means sacrificing added benefits, but this change may also cause commercial insurers to back out of the plan and leave many elders switching their providers. Some positives to this new plan would be that the government wants to prevent illness, by giving free diabetes classes or paying in full for a mammogram, and keep elders out of the hospital, since one of five Medicare patients find themselves back in the hospital within the same month. I have strong feelings towards this change because my grandmother is on Medicare and I wouldn't like for them to change her plan, especially with things as tough as they are now. I think it is great that the government wants to address issues before they come up, and they show that with the prevention services they plan on having. I don't, however, understand why they want to cut back on the number of people that have Medicare Advantage. I would think that the more people that have some kind of health care plan would be good, even if they spend more money on the plan. The money would go to better use if it was put to health care services than bailing out failing companies. I think this story is important to everyone because we all grow old someday, but if they cut back on how much they spend, that will eventually lead to cutting some of the services that are already offered or some of the new ones that could cost a lot more than expected.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091002/ap_on_re_us/us_medicare_seniors