Preserving Medicare's Promise : opinion Barbara Franklin IARP Aug 2011

The following is an op-ed by , president of the Illinois Alliance for Retired Americans.

This year Medicare turns 46, an occasion that gives good cause to celebrate a program that is one of our nation’s greatest accomplishments. Medicare has saved countless lives, providing coverage to millions of older Americans and people with disabilities who without the program would not have access to high-quality, affordable health care. Indeed, it is this fact that first inspired the passage of Medicare.


The Medicare population is often misunderstood. Most do not live in lush retirement communities. In fact, half of the Medicare population lives on incomes of $22,000 or less. Many rely on Social Security as their major source—in some cases their sole source—of income. And yet, while people with Medicare live on less income, they pay more for their care because their need for health care coverage is great. In 2006, nearly half of all non-institutionalized Medicare beneficiaries had three or more chronic conditions, almost one-third had a cognitive or mental impairment, and over one-fourth reported being in fair or poor health or having a limitation in activities of daily living. As a result, people with Medicare already spend on average 15 percent of their incomes on health care, three times more than the non-Medicare population.

This is why we must fight to protect to the program. Many proposals under consideration, such as increasing cost-sharing, redesigning the benefit, raising the Medicare eligibility age, and limiting Medigap coverage, save the government money by shifting costs to beneficiaries and decreasing access to care. However, none of these proposals addresses the underlying cause of growing costs in Medicare: growing costs in the health care sector overall. For this reason, we must adopt policies like those included in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which attempt to address the root of health care inflation by promoting prevention, care coordination and changes in provider payment incentives to reward the quality, rather than the quantity, of care provided. Other policies that address the high cost the government pays for drugs under the Medicare prescription drug benefit, such as allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices or rebate plans for drugs used by low-income Medicare beneficiaries, would also help to achieve savings without passing the buck to older Americans, people with disabilities and their families.

By including these policies in a balanced approach that includes increases in revenue through the elimination of tax cuts and loopholes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, we can avert deep cuts to Medicare that would result in permanent and detrimental changes to the program. Most of all, we can preserve the promise we made as a nation back in 1965—that we all have a right to access high-quality, affordable health care, and to live with dignity regardless of age or disability.

Barbara Franklin is president of the Illinois Alliance for Retired Americans.