Writing Homework Help

2 classmates discussion responses with 3 references and each 250 words each not including references.

One:“To bring the Trust Fund into balance, more revenues will be needed, spending growth will need to be further restrained, or beneficiaries will need to pay more of their own health care expenses either directly or through premiums.”(Davis, K. 2012) There is a debate on which methods would work to make Medicare more effective and less costly. With the increase of the baby boomers entering into retirement, there are fewer workers to pay Medicare taxes. More spending growth expected in the future. While there are some benefits to some of the options, there are some challenges. If the age is increased from 65 to 67 years of age to qualify, there are more people to pay the taxes, but the 2-year change wouldn’t have a huge impact on the costs of Medicaid. If greater cost-sharing is implemented the costs of spending would be lower for Medicaid, but the costs fall on the insured, and the beneficiaries having to pay more out-of-pocket for care as well as employers and providers. There is the idea of the restructure of Medicaid to control the costs. This option seems to be the best option since Medicaid has become so complex and there are so many restrictions. “Many of the existing Medicare payment policies have been criticized for rewarding physicians and other providers for quantity rather than value and for lacking incentives to improve patient care by encouraging better coordination among providers.” (Antos, J. 2012) Payment reform is the most vital part of the restructuring necessary to make the changes needed to Medicaid. Creating a value-based system, creation of ACO’s, and responsible spending is needed as part of the structure. “There’s also growing agreement that a fee-for-service system like Medicare’s, which reimburses physicians for some 7000 discrete services, is inconsistent with achieving the care coordination needed by seniors with multiple chronic conditions or complex acute care needs.”(Wilensky, G.2012)

The purpose of healthcare and the PPACA is to provide affordable healthcare for all without a decrease in efficiency, accessibility, and quality. The enactment of this law should require a Medicare structure reform as the complexity, requirements, eligibility, and costs are where the problems start. In order to restructure Medicare, there will be a need for the IPAB (appointed by the Obama administration) to be involved to assist with the goal of spending by Medicaid, which is expected to grow by 6.6% in years to come. Forming a decentralized organization may be the better solution, rather than having one team, this could expand decision-making for the structural reform and includes those that are affected in everyday life. “Ideally, decision making occurs at the level of the people who are most affected and have the most intimate knowledge about the work.” (Bateman, et.al) For the reform to work, consumer representatives, providers, and an unbiased board needs to be involved. Only then can the costs be controlled, the program can become efficient and effective, and allow the program to do what it was created to do, help the people.

Sources:

Bateman, Thomas, Snell, Scott, Konopaske, Rob. Management. McGraw Hill Education. New York. 2020.

Antos, J. (2012). The Wyden-Ryan proposal: A foundation for realistic Medicare reform. New England Journal of Medicine, 366(10), 879-881.

Davis, K. (2012). The future of Medicare: Converting to premium support or continuing as a guaranteed benefit program.

Wilensky, G. (2012). Directions for bipartisan Medicare reform. New England Journal of Medicine, 366(12), 1071-1073.

Davis, K. (2012). The future of Medicare: Converting to premium support or continuing as a guaranteed benefit program.

Wilensky, G. (2012). Directions for bipartisan Medicare reform. New England Journal of Medicine, 366(12), 1071-1073.

Two:

Introduction: It is possible that improvements in health care may make all individuals better off, even if it means that some may have more options than others. However, expenditure on health care in the United States is rising at an increasingly rapid pace, and the pace of health care cost growth has already surpassed overall economic growth. Expenditures on health care has been growing at a much greater pace than any other category of government spending, and that increase is contributing to the country’s long-term budgetary woes.

Discussion: For approximately 60 million Americans, including almost 9 million handicapped employees, Medicare is the primary source of health insurance. Medicare was established in 1965 to ensure that America’s elderly have certain healthcare coverage when they turn 65. Some politicians in Washington are proposing making elderly wait two extra years to qualify for Medicare to minimize government expenditures. The benefits decrease includes raising the age of eligibility for Medicare from 65 to 67. With little concern for the adverse effects for Medicare recipients who have paid into the program during their working years, the proposal is being put forth for only fiscal reasons: in order to limit the pace of rise in Medicare expenditures (2020).

Over 15 million Medicare beneficiaries spend 20% or more of their income for health insurance, including deductibles and co-payments, as well as uninsured treatments. the most financially vulnerable people in the US are those who earn less than $24,000 for a single person and have several chronic diseases or functional impairments A majority of recipients paid out-of-pocket an average of $3,024 each year. This points to the need to approach change with carefully, as costs and gaps in financial access show. It is unclear how costs that are already substantial may be restructured to guarantee affordability while also alleviating the load on lower-income recipients (Cost Burdens by Income and Health Status).

There is a lot of difficulty in measuring the cost of health care, due of the intricacy of the delivery process. All forms of resources are involved in the care of a patient, including staff, equipment, space, and supplies.

Medical care is costly. The truth is, there is no avoiding it. Health insurance premiums for families have risen to $20,000 on average. Increasing insurance premiums to an amount equal to 100% of median household income is expected to become commonplace by 2033, according to one estimate. This is even more disturbing, since around one-third of health expenditures goes for services with little or no benefit. However, waste reduction measures have been challenging. Meanwhile, the growing cost of medical care is constraining government and private resources that may be used elsewhere. Many have stagnated in their pay increase because of it. (Mechanic, 2018)

Expensive treatments may be delayed due to increased use of affordable services that assist to protect against sickness. In other words, individuals may prevent heart attacks and strokes by screening for, diagnosing, and treating excessive blood pressure and excessive cholesterol. There is no need for procedures like as angioplasty for them. Early detection may uncover cancer earlier, resulting in lower medical costs for late-stage cancer (as well as increase their chance of surviving).

There should be an aim of improving the value of services provided to patients. The amount of value that health care brings to patients is assessed by the results obtained per dollar spent. The critical measure of an organization’s performance is not the number of different services offered or the volume of services supplied, but the value of those services. Caring for someone might cost a lot of money, but you do not always get better care as a result.

On a national and local level, the healthcare business continually evolves as policies, patients, and everything in between change. All these factors, such as increasing life expectancy, technology developments, and changing disease patterns, have an influence on where healthcare is heading. It is necessary to focus on the different social changes to have a clearer picture of where healthcare is heading.

Conclusion: Medicare enrollment is predicted to increase among baby boomers, making it necessary for the federal, state, and local governments to raise their health care spending. Because of this new expenditure, the entire healthcare system in the United States will be substantially affected. Due to the decline in the number of people on Medicaid in 2016, increase in spending slowed to an average rate of 7.1% per year. However, as the baby boom generation ages, spending is predicted to accelerate to an average annual growth rate of 7.1% per year in 2018 and 2019.

References:

Cost Burdens by Income and Health Status. Medicare Beneficiaries’ High Out-of-Pocket Costs. (n.d.). https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2017/may/medicare-beneficiaries-high-out-pocket-costs-cost-burdens-income.

Mechanic, S. A. R. (2018, July 13). Health Care Cost Control: Where Do We Go From Here?: Health Affairs Blog. Health Affairs. https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20180705.24704/full/.

Raising Medicare’s Eligibility Age: A Costly Benefit Cut for Seniors. NCPSSM. (2020, January 13). https://www.ncpssm.org/documents/medicare-policy-papers/raising-medicares-eligibility-age-a-costly-benefit-cut-for-seniors/.

Weissert, W. G. & Weissert, C. S. (2019). Governing health: The politics of health policy (5th ed.). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.