Fueled by the national momentum for social reform during the 1960’s, the strongly Democratic Congress decided to enact the Medicare program as a way to provide much needed health care insurance for the large population of elderly Americans. In “Introduction to US Health Policy”, Donald Barr highlights that when Medicare was passed in 1965, only about 56 percent of elderly citizens in the United States had any form of hospital insurance. Since aging is an inescapable fate of every person, there was an American consensus that no one should face financial ruin due to the rising costs of receiving health care during their elderly years which served as a catalyst for this program’s formation. The passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 has further …show more content…
The Medicare chapter in “Healthcare Politics and Policy in America” reveals that this federally funded program provides a crucial aspect of economic security by providing these select cohorts with access to the same standard of quality health care services as most Americans. Medicare succeeded in solving the problem that many elderly individuals faced when they lost their health insurance plans after retiring under America’s employer-based health insurance system. The hospital insurance program of Medicare, named Part A, helps cover inpatient hospital expenses for specified time periods and also pays for hospice care for terminally ill people. The second part of Medicare that was created is the supplemental medical insurance, or Part B, which covers the costs associated with outpatient providers of health care for the 92 percent of recipients who opt for this voluntary program. Under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the Medicare Advantage Part C program was . The last addition to Medicare, known as Part D, was enacted in 2006 as a voluntary measure to combat the rising rates of prescription drug …show more content…
“Healthcare Politics and Policy in America”, provides crucial facts revealing how the expansion of Medicare’s coverage and benefits has threatened the very nature of this program. The rapid rise in costs has been traded off with a decrease in the overall quality of health care being offered. Medicare beneficiaries have to pay risings costs in the form of deductibles for Parts A and B, a 20 percent copayment for Part B, along with premiums for Parts B, C, and D. “Introduction to US Health Policy” explains that due to the extremely large size of the baby boomer population, an unfortunate situation has arisen where 3.9 working Americans are needed to finance each Medicare beneficiary. Even in the unrealistic scenario where the cost of care per beneficiary remains constant, the payroll tax burden of each worker will rise nearly 70 percent in the next thirty years to cover the cost of hospital care expenses of Medicare’s Part A. The rising costs of providing American health care have forced patients to pay . Despite the Congressional Budget Office’s claim that the Affordable Care Act will save the government a net $428 billion in Medicare spending over its first ten years, the "Obama dies, grandma dies” article by Daniel Gitterman and John Scott