This headline–Bush Pushes Plan to Curb Medicare Appeals–jumped out at me from the morning paper (the Mercury News seems to reprint at least 4-6 articles per day from the NY Times) today. Our Administration, in it’s continuing battle to eliminate any benefits from the general population, wants to change the way coverage denial appeals are handled by Medicare. Currently the appeals are heard by administrative judges, federal employees are are very carefully shielded from political pressure, and coverage is granted in a bit more than half the cases.
Some geniuses at the top of the Bush food chain think this is a bad thing and so they want to re-engineeer the system. Now, I understand every individual has their own political views and personal biases, but from what I can see the current setup works well and at least the judges don’t have to fear for their jobs over each decision. The new plan would put that out the window. It would also change the structure of the appeals process to binding arbitration, another anti-consumer move.
But why does the Bush Administration want to make this change? Making sure an older American has regular home health care visits from a nurse is, I guess, too much to ask. Call me naive but I thought the point of Medicare was to assure quality healthcare coverage and not judge usage by the penny.
BillSaysThis 