Medicare Issues & Connecticut’s New Affordable Health Insurance Plan

Hello, and welcome to the Weekly Health Insurance News Roundup. Today we’ll take a look at Medicare, specifically two issues surrounding it that can affect your access to health care. Medicare is always a touchy subject, whether talking about its coverage or its internal workings. In this installment we have two stories involving Medicare, and how proposed changes could affect your access to health care and much more.

The first story involves a possible rate cut for doctors if congress doesn’t intervene. This cut would be around ten percent, and would make it less attractive for doctors to take Medicare patients. Congress is supposed to begin debating this issue soon, before the rate cut takes place. What’s at stake here is a bill that would approve a one-percent increase in reimbursement, which passed the House but was filibustered in the Senate.

This current crisis has brought some basic problems of Medicare to the forefront, such as the fact that basic care still costs more than Medicare reimbursements, which could lead doctors to refuse private care for Medicare patients. According to reports, doctors are actually reimbursed twenty-percent less than the cost they pay to actually see Medicare patients, when one factors in the costs of actually running a clinic or doctor’s office. This bill in question would not cut the reimbursement to physicians, but rather to health insurance companies in regards to Medicare patients and their care. Right now, however, until a decision is reached, it remains to be seen whether a minimum increase will be allowed, or whether a cut in reimbursement will lead to deepening problems.

Another Medicare story involves a proposed three-percent inflation increase of Medicare rated for outpatient services in 2009, which could cover around 4,000 hospitals across the United States. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed the increases in light of the growing segment of outpatient services across the country. The CMS expects to spend over $29,000,000,000 on outpatient services alone, and Medicare — along with private health insurance companies — are trying to reign in spending on such popular services as ultrasounds and CT scans. These new proposals would include more quality requirements, punishing hospitals for not complying with reporting requirements and so on. Overall, it seems as if these Medicare issues make things more confusing before they make them simpler. Hopefully it’ll all get sorted out in the end.

In other health insurance news, recently Connecticut’s new affordable health insurance plan entitled Charter Oak went in effect. The state-subsidized plan has annual deductibles from $150 to $900 for those individuals too old to be covered on the state’s child-based HUSKY or too young for Medicare, covering individuals between nineteen and sixty-five. The plan’s initial cost is estimated at around $11,000,000, but in looking at the estimated cost of Massachusetts’s mandated health plan, and the actual cost that came out to be much higher, I have a feeling that $11,000,000 price tag is on the low end of things. The new plan seems to be getting a positive reaction by individuals and small business owners who can’t afford insurance for their own employees.

This concludes this issue of the Weekly Health Insurance News Roundup. I hope you’ve found it interesting, informative and entertaining. May your day be a healthy and happy one.

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• Video: Medicare & Affordable Health Insurance in NH
• Health Insurance News Channel on YouTube

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