{"id":6393,"date":"2021-10-21T11:45:58","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T11:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=6393"},"modified":"2021-10-21T11:45:58","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T11:45:58","slug":"medicares-benefits-are-full-of-holes-and-patients-keep-falling-through","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=6393","title":{"rendered":"Medicare\u2019s benefits are full of holes \u2014 and patients keep falling through"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“Medicare<\/a> is one of America\u2019s flagship government programs, immensely popular with the public, a critical safety net for people over 65 \u2014 and it is full of holes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program\u2019s benefits are not as comprehensive as most other kinds of health insurance Americans carry. Unlike with commercial health insurance or with Medicaid<\/a>, which covers people in or near poverty, there may not be a limit on what a person on Medicare may have to pay out of pocket for their medical care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Medicare also doesn\u2019t cover dental or vision services, which are essential to the health of the over-65 population that it serves. The benefits for long-term care are meager, placing an enormous financial burden on patients and their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two things can be true at once: Medicare has been a tremendous success in eliminating poverty from medical expenses among the elderly<\/a>, compared to the pre-1965 status quo, and it is, as currently constructed, woefully inadequate to the realities of modern health care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats in Congress appear to recognize this problem. They plan to include some expansion of Medicare \u2014 by adding new benefits<\/a> and perhaps making more people eligible<\/a> \u2014 in the major budget reconciliation bill<\/a> they hope to pass in the coming months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For now, they appear to be focused on adding new dental, vision, and hearing benefits<\/a>. They are working with finite resources<\/a>; money spent on new benefits is money that can\u2019t be spent on adding more people to the rolls or lowering patients\u2019 out-of-pocket costs for other medical services.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/22626941\/medicare-insurance-dental-benefits-reconciliation-bill<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Medicare is one of America\u2019s flagship government programs, immensely popular with the public, a critical safety net for people over 65 \u2014 and it is full of holes.<\/p>\n

The program\u2019s benefits are not as comprehensive as most other kinds of health insurance Americans carry. Unlike with commercial health insurance or with Medicaid, which covers people in or near poverty, there may not be a limit on what a person on Medicare may have to pay out of pocket for their medical care.<\/p>\n

Medicare also doesn\u2019t cover dental or vision services, which are essential to the health of the over-65 population that it serves. The benefits for long-term care are meager, placing an enormous financial burden on patients and their families.<\/p>\n

Two things can be true at once: Medicare has been a tremendous success in eliminating poverty from medical expenses among the elderly, compared to the pre-1965 status quo, and it is, as currently constructed, woefully inadequate to the realities of modern health care.<\/p>\n

Democrats in Congress appear to recognize this problem. They plan to include some expansion of Medicare \u2014 by adding new benefits and perhaps making more people eligible \u2014 in the major budget reconciliation bill they hope to pass in the coming months.<\/p>\n

For now, they appear to be focused on adding new dental, vision, and hearing benefits. They are working with finite resources; money spent on new benefits is money that can\u2019t be spent on adding more people to the rolls or lowering patients\u2019 out-of-pocket costs for other medical services.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[378],"class_list":["post-6393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-medicare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6394,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6393\/revisions\/6394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}