NRL News
Page 1
June 2007
Volume 34
Issue 6

Right of Older Americans to Add Own Money to
Get Unrationed Insurance in Medicare Faces Extinction

House Health Subcommittee Chair Pete Stark (D-Ca.), a vehement, longtime opponent of the right of older Americans to spend their own money to save their own lives, said at a May 21 hearing that Medicare private fee-for-service plans are at the “top of the list” of his targets this year.

Abby Block is director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Center for Beneficiary Choices. It is the official government agency that administers the Medicare private fee for service program. She was pushed to agree that price controls, in the form of required bureaucratic approval, should be imposed on the premiums charged by such plans. This would eliminate the central accomplishment the National Right to Life Committee fought so hard to achieve in 1995 through 2003.

Under the private fee-for-service plans option in Medicare, senior citizens can choose health insurance whose value is not limited by what the government may pay toward it. These plans currently can set premiums and reimbursement rates for providers without upward limits set by government regulation.

This means that such plans will not be forced to ration treatment, as long as senior citizens are willing and able to pay more to choose them. Over 1 million older Americans are now enrolled in private fee-for-service plans, about 2% of all Medicare beneficiaries. (For more details, see March 2007 NRL News.)

The period between now and Congress’ August recess is likely to be critical for the continued existence of this “escape from rationing” in Medicare.

“Grassroots Americans must fairly storm their congressional offices with letters and phone calls insisting that the private fee-for-service option be preserved in Medicare without imposing price controls in the form of premium ‘review’ or ‘approval,’” said Burke J. Balch, director of NRLC’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics. “Otherwise, we are all likely to face the slow strangulation of involuntary death for want of necessary medical treatment and denied the right even to use our own money to save our own lives”

Legislative Action Alert
Prevent Government Rationing of Lifesaving Treatment and Drugs under Medicare

URGENT! Please contact your U.S. senators and representatives with this basic message:

In order to protect senior citizens’ lives, we must ensure their right to get unrationed medical care under Medicare. We must not prohibit older Americans from adding their own money, if they wish, to get unrationed insurance.

Ask them to:
* Support the “private fee-for-service” option in Medicare.
* Oppose giving federal bureaucrats the right to “review” premiums proposed by private fee-for-service plans, which would have the effect of imposing price controls that limit older Americans’ choice to add their own money to get unrationed insurance.

Because of post-9-11 security screening requirements, postal mail, to be effective, is best sent to the LOCAL instead of the Washington office, which you may locate in your local phone book or by going to http://[insert senator’s last name].senate.gov.

You can call your senator’s state office (see local phone book) or go through the Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121(Senate) or 202-225-3121 (House).