NRLC ENDORSES BREAUX-FRIST MEDICARE REFORM BILL
The National Right to Life Committee has endorsed Medicare reform legislation introduced by Senators John Breaux (D-La.) and Dr. Bill Frist (R-Tn.) which allows older Americans, if they wish, voluntarily to add their own money to the government Medicare payment in order to obtain unrationed health insurance. This is known as the "premium support" approach to Medicare reform.

The Breaux-Frist Medicare Preservation and Improvement Act, S. 1895, is likely to be voted upon this year by the full Senate.

Since its inception, the National Right to Life Committee has been committed to protecting the right to life from conception until natural death, which means that it has fought just as strongly against infanticide and euthanasia as against abortion. In particular, NRLC has strongly opposed involuntary denial of lifesaving medical treatment through rationing.

NRLC judges the economic reality to be that without massive tax increases (which are politically unrealistic), future government payments for Medicare will not be able to keep up with medical inflation. The coming retirement of the baby boom generation will greatly exacerbate this.

Therefore, if the funds available for health care for senior citizens are essentially limited to the government Medicare payment, the only possible result is rationing--which amounts to involuntary euthanasia.

The alternative is to allow those eligible for Medicare voluntarily to supplement government payments for health insurance premiums with their own funds, if they wish, just as they supplement government Social Security payments for retirement living expenses with their own funds. This is the approach taken by the Breaux-Frist bill.

The Clinton-Gore Administration has consistently supported stringent limits on the rights of older Americans to spend their own money for medical care. However, a 1999 study demonstrates that even those who can afford to pay nothing on top of the government payment would be better off under a "premium support" version of Medicare.

Doctors and hospitals traditionally have provided reduced fee and free health care to those unable fully to pay for it. They have been able to afford to do so because the payments for fully insured patients covered their fixed administrative costs, such as office staff and diagnostic equipment. However, with the growing prevalence of low-paying managed care insurance, health care providers have been less and less able to provide undercompensated care for those who are uninsured or poorly insured.

A study in the April 5, 1999, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, based on a survey of 12,000 doctors, found that while those physicians who derived none of their income from managed care provided an average of 10 hours of uncompensated care in a month, those deriving 85% or more of their income from managed care provided an average of only 5.2 hours of uncompensated care.

"If middle class older Americans are permitted to add their own funds on top of declining government payments to get unrationed, unmanaged health insurance under Medicare," said Burke Balch, director of NRLC's medical ethics department, "this will put money into the health care system to cover providers' fixed costs, allowing them to help save poorer people from rationing."

Thus, Balch added, "regardless of their income level, all older Americans would have a better chance of obtaining unrationed, lifesaving health care under the Breaux-Frist Medicare reform bill."