Competition Can Fix Medicare Insolvency, CMS Official Writes In Letter To The Editor

Main Category: Medicare / Medicaid / SCHIP
Article Date: 06 Aug 2008 - 11:00 PDT

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"To keep Medicare solvent, we need to promote competition and consumer choice as we have with the Medicare Advantage program and the Medicare Part D prescription drug program," CMS Deputy Administrator Herb Kuhn writes in a Baltimore Sun letter to the editor. Kuhn writes that Medicare costs "have risen even faster than overall nationwide health care costs -- much faster." He adds that "soon the baby boomers will retire, which will sharply reduce the number of workers supporting each beneficiary."

Kuhn continues, "Competition among plans has contributed to the Medicare Part D program's success in reducing costs nearly 40% relative to the original estimates of the cost of a Medicare drug benefit." However, "Congress just axed a promising program to replace government-mandated pricing with competitive bidding" for durable medical equipment, Kuhn writes. He concludes that "continued congressional inertia will only impose crushing obligations on our children and grandchildren and undermine our country's economic viability in a global economy" (Kuhn, Baltimore Sun, 8/5).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

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