For my write-up today on Newt Gingrich's Saving Lives & Saving Money: Transforming Health and Healthcare, I want to highlight what Newt says on pages 145-146:
"The
current system dictates a focus on reactive acute care and does not
incentivize prevention. Coverage for prescription medications is a
paramount example...Medicare will cover the visit to the doctor to
discuss the numbness in the foot, but it will not pay for the insulin to
relieve, and stop, the problem. Medicare will pay for visits to the
emergency room when a beneficiary has a heart attack, but it fails to
pay for the cholesterol medication that may have prevented the incident
all together. Medicare's end-stage renal-disease program (offers kidney
dialysis when the kidneys no longer function) is one of the highest
cost programs in Medicare, yet it will not pay for the insulin that
could prevent many of those individuals from needing it in the first
place."
Newt wrote this before the Medicare prescription drug
entitlement was passed into law. And what Newt said makes sense, for
you would expect for prevention to save money by reducing the number of
people who end up in emergency rooms. But did the prescription drug
benefit save Medicare money? As far I as know, Medicare spending has
continued to increase since that benefit was passed. Why? Is it
because the donut hole requires some people to still pay for their
prescription drugs, thereby hindering them from a health-plan of
prevention? Is Medicare Advantage part of the problem, as I have read
that it entails the government giving money to insurance companies, plus
there are questions about the quality of Medicare Advantage plans? Is
the sheer cost of prescription drugs part of the problem?