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Caitlin Xiong

Me.maher

Gov Econ

02 May 2019

Research Paper Of Medicare

Now in the world, the Medicare and the Medicaid became a important problem that every

citizen had to face. Medicare and Medicaid are an act to reduce barriers to medical care for

America's most vulnerable citizens – aging adults and people living in poverty. As one of the

countries has the most effective medical system, American government did a really good job on

Medicare and Medicaid. Although most of people still have standard about life and the

consequences when they getting sick, part of people who are living poverty and the seniors have

better situation. Since seniors have been harder and harder to fully pay their health-insurance and

eventually would be impoverished by out-of-pocket costs – or possibly even left without care.

However, there are some issues showed up too. There are three major problems which is

Medicare cost too much, seniors could not understand some terms in Medicare Law and congress

did nothing to change.

The first issue is that the Medicare cost too much than it expect. For many years, the cost

of treating each individual Medicare beneficiary has been growing faster than has our gross

domestic product, or GDP. A 2015 report from the Medicare Trustees found that Medicare's

Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust is set to exhaust its cash reserves by 2030. While this doesn't mean

that Medicare is in any way going bankrupt, it does signify that a revenue shortfall appears

imminent. For the Trustees' report, incoming payroll taxes could cover about 86% of current

Medicare HI expenses by 2030, with the program sustaining itself at that level through 2089.
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(https://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2016/02/21/medicares-biggest-problem-is-probably-

not-what-you.aspx)

The reason why it happens is because the Medicare beneficiary population is growing faster than

the population at large, and is likely to continue to do so indefinitely – and at a rapid rate for the

next quarter century or so. (https://www.ced.org/blog/entry/whats-right-whats-wrong-with-

medicare)

The one way to change the situation is to reduce the cost of spend for Medicare.

The second major issue is that seniors or those uneducated people cannot understand

some terms or informations written in the old Medicare Law. According to years' worth of

survey data, seniors' inability to understand the complexities of Medicare may be leading to poor

decision-making. The resource we find at 2005,when the duo of KFF and Harvard School of

Public Health questioned seniors on their understanding of Medicare's then-new drug benefit,

which is known now at Part D. At the time of the survey, a whopping 61% of respondents

claimed to understand Part D "not much at all" or "not at all." Furthermore, just 5% of seniors

correctly identified how many drug plan options they'd have to choose from. In 2011, another

survey released by UnitedHealthcare and the National Council on Aging showed that less than

half (46%) of seniors had a solid understanding of how Medicare works, and 39% of seniors said

their ability to navigate Medicare's options was "fair to poor."

(https://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2016/02/21/medicares-biggest-problem-is-probably-

not-what-you.aspx) The only way to solve this problem is to have educational events such as law

classes or presentation to make more people know how exactly the Medicare Law works and

teach them how to get advantage from it.

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The third issue I want mentioned were not everyone will get benefits from the social

long-term foundation. There is a fact that between 2015 and 2035, the worker-to-beneficiary

ratio is forecast to fall from 2.8-to-1 to as low as 2.1-to-1. In short, there won't be enough payroll

tax revenue coming in to support the growing number of beneficiary payments heading out. (The

motley fool, the 4 Biggest Problems Facing Social Security, Sean Williams.) As the population

growing in such high speed, too much baby boomers, surge rate can’t be controlled, we have to

rule about one family only allowed one baby. Additionally, the congress did nothing to stop the

cash shortage in this program. There is a news, The House bill "forces a $25 billion cut in

Medicare" warn a series of digital ads targeting vulnerable Republicans by the progressive group

Save My Care. Democratic members have regularly raised the issue in speeches, interviews and

on social media. (NBCnews,Fact check: Democrats claim GOP tax bill slashes $25B from

Medicare, Andrew Harrer) What congress did is simple cut down the cost not to improve the

program. The solution I proved is to made the Congress change or utilize tax-advantaged

investment vehicles for shelves.

All the problems I mentioned were very serious,not only about the medicare or

medicaid,it is still connected with the whole society,no matter seniors or youngers.The

government should be focus on citizens’ mind.Changing the law to instead citizens view of the

laws.