New Federal Medicaid/Medicare Changes Coming Soon

Things are starting to get worse for a lot of the lower middle class Medicaid-Medicare recipients in the United States. The Obama administration is going full speed ahead with their National Health Care reform changes. All Medicaid-Medicare users recently received a letter stating that as of 7/01/2009 that visual and dental will no longer be covered under the new federal plan. Just these two changes can get very costly for these folks, but there are a few more changes coming along as well.

$313 billion in federal health benefit cuts are in the works and being pushed hard by the Obama administration. A Los Angeles Times article by Noam N. Levey outlines the changes that are coming.

"Reductions in payments to providers to reflect increased efficiencies in the system, which the White House estimates could save $110 billion over the next decade."

Cuts in federal subsidies to hospitals that treat large populations of uninsured patients, estimated to save $106 billion in the next decade.

Cuts in how much the federal government pays pharmaceutical companies to provide prescription drugs to seniors and others, estimated to save $75 billion over the next decade."

So now we have to figure out how these changes will affect the users of Medicaid-Medicare. The reductions to providers will probably end up with fewer medical establishments accepting Medicare-Medicaid patients. Some hospitals, clinics, and out-patient services simply will not be able to afford to accept the new plan. The end result here will be less access for the recipients to find medical help. Also the quality of the care provided may be lowered to abosrb the cuts.

The cut in federal subsidies to certain hospitals will most likely cause some of these providers to close down completely. Most of these are barely making it now, and further reductions in cash will have a devastating effect. So once again, the affected users will have fewer places available to get treatment.

Cuts to the pharmaceuticals will have a couple negative effects. Co-pay for medications for the users will most likely rise to offset the Federal reduction. Another problem will be that some pharmacys will not be able to afford the price cuts so they will quit accepting Medicaid-Medicare prescriptions. Higher co-pay and less access for medications will be the end result here.

Their main logic for the cuts are that with rapidly expanding enrollments in theses medical plans, they have to make room to be able to afford the new subscribers. This makes sense, but a lot of needy folks will soon be feeling the big pinch.

Thanks for reading