Lott Says Seniors Should Pay More For Medicare Benefits
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said Monday that senior citizens should pay more for their Medicare benefits to keep the program solvent into the 21st century.
“You cannot continue to provide more and better services and say, ‘Oh, and by the way, you don’t have to pay for it,”’ he said. “The truth of the matter is, the people who are getting the benefits … are going to have to bear more of the costs.”
Republicans have generally welcomed President Clinton’s willingness to squeeze more money out of the Medicare program. But Lott, R-Miss., was the latest congressional leader to voice doubts about the way Clinton has proposed saving $100 billion from Medicare over five years: cutting payments to hospitals and insurers.
Lott’s comments came as the government announced health care spending rose 5.5 percent in 1995. But government spending for programs such as Medicare jumped 8.7 percent, while private health costs increased just 2.9 percent from 1994, according to a report released Monday by the Health and Human Services Department.
The disparity is largely because most privately insured people use managed care plans, the report said. Medicare, which serves nearly 38 million elderly and disabled Americans, enrolls just 10 percent in managed care.
“There is new urgency to our need to reform Medicare,” HHS Secretary Donna Shalala told the American Hospital Association, meeting in Washington this week.
Officials hope to stem Medicare’s costs by encouraging more senior citizens to choose cost-effective managed care plans.
Given that goal, Lott said, it is “unfair and ineffective” for Clinton’s budget to cut payments to health maintenance organizations while imposing only modest premium increases.
“We need to continue to look for ways to encourage more choice, and managed care is providing a lot of that opportunity,” Lott told reporters after speaking to hospital administrators. “If you squeeze them to where it becomes .th.th. not profitable, they will cut back on those services.”
In fact, he said, he might support increasing payments to HMOs, “if it would encourage more participation and more choice.”
Administration officials propose $34 billion in savings over five years by cutting managed care fees. They oppose anything beyond modest premium increases, saying the poorest senior citizens cannot afford them.
But Clinton has said he does not rule out higher charges for wealthier recipients. Neither does Lott: “They ought to look at that as an overall part of the solution,” he said.
Lott added that he hopes for changes in the medical malpractice system this year and said Republicans plan a sizable increase in funding for medical research, possibly doubling spending.
Since Clinton announced the outlines of his Medicare plan last week, Republicans have criticized him for failing to look beyond the program’s short-term financial troubles.
Shalala argued Monday that the Clinton budget does just that.
“Medicare reform is much more than just an exercise in numbers,” she said. “It is a vital effort to actually prepare this program for very complex challenges in the future.”