This morning, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden (Oregon) and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) shaken up Capitol Hill with interesting, bipartisan plan to reform Medicare and private-sector companies also sponsored insurance system. Politically, the plan is a huge boost for Mitt Romney, who own the statement regarding Medicare reform hew closely to Wyden-Ryan; and also to House Republicans, who now have an easy answer to Democrats who were planning to attack Medicare reformers in the 2012 campaign. Substantive, plans have prompted a lot of quality, but there are also some important blanks Wyden and Ryan need to fill.
The core of the Wyden plan-Ryan is to bring market prices to Medicare, by Robert F. Coulam, Roger Feldman, and Bryan Dowd.
The basic idea behind competitive bidding is that, say, in a county by county, you let personal and traditional Medicare plan offers plan with actuarial value of the same competition, to see who can offer the same benefits package that is most efficient. Each plan in a particular county will name the price they are willing to offer this service, and seniors are free to choose any plan they want. However, the Government will only subsidize the amount equivalent to the offer proposed by the second cheapest. If You want more expensive plans, You must pay the difference yourself.
As I mentioned in my post on Romney as related to the above, the competitive bidding has some fan of the center-left; Indeed, the form of competitive bidding is part of the Senate’s version of Obamacare. It also has a fan on the right, especially Yuval Levin, Dean of the conservative right-wonk reform set. The main concern I mentioned in my post that Romney offer competitive, if not structured correctly, place the private insurance losses for the Government’s plans. It would be important to ensure that there is a level playing field between public and private options under a system.
The plan will only apply to people aged 55 or younger today. This will be future Senior buy insurance “Exchange Medicare,” that would require a plan to guarantee coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions, and require a plan to charge the same premium to people who are healthy or ill.