Obamacare Ends Medicare As We Know It

from The Heritage Foundation:

Obamacare Ends Medicare As We Know It

As budget season approaches, premium support is gaining traction as the only viable option to save Medicare. In a recent Politico article, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D–MD) is quoted as saying liberals will use Obamacare’s new provisions to combat a conservative budget that reforms Medicare using premium support.

Hoyer told reporters, “Yes, we need to make Medicare viable. We believe that the health care bill—and very frankly CBO (Congressional Budget Office) believes the health care bill will do something that Medicare very badly needs, and that is to constrain price escalation in health care.” So the left is still claiming that the health care law will help sustain Medicare’s future—but Heritage just published a new Fact Sheet showing the opposite.

Hoyer couldn’t be more wrong. Obamacare will not solve Medicare’s fiscal problem. The health law is already in the budget baseline, yet Medicare still faces trillions in unfunded obligations. Obviously, Obamacare did not solve the problem.

Instead, Obamacare’s tinkering with the current program will essentially end Medicare as we know it by replacing the existing fee-for-service (FFS) payment system, the heart of traditional Medicare, with top-down payment and delivery schemes independent of the consumer choice and competition that would enable them to prove their value. Worse, new layers of bureaucracy and compliance will discourage physicians who are already wrestling with reams of paperwork and will undermine their professional independence in the practice of medicine.

What’s a better way to fix Medicare? And how much could we save by bringing free market reforms to it? In this week’s Heritage in Focus, expert Bob Moffit discusses these questions and more. Click here to listen.