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Medicare Option is Dropped from Health Care Legislation, Individual Health Insurance Reclaims Center Stage

Just when everyone thought the Democrats had locked-in health care legislation that most in the Senate could agree to pass, the notion of expanding Medicare creates another impasse.

As it says in the Wall Street Journal article on health care and the Senate, just last week the plan to make Medicare available as buy-ins for those individuals 55 and over was introduced as a means of keeping those people out of the market for individual health insurance.

You see, many men and women 55 and older are now suddenly unemployed and uninsured. By offering them Medicare, millions of currently uninsured could enjoy coverage.

But Senator Joe Lieberman made it clear that he wouldn't support an expansion of the already-embattled, government-run Medicare.

Democrats have agreed to press on without the measure, leaving those men and women to find coverage on the individual health insurance market in the coming years.

Still, there is hope for them on the horizon. Current legislation would make it illegal for insurers to deny someone based on pre-existing conditions. That, combined with subsidies offered to those who can't afford insurance on their own, would make individual health insurance far more affordable for the 55 and older set.

One question that still remains is this: will health care costs be controlled or capped? If so, how? These questions are particularly important if a legal mandate to get coverage is passed, since the individual health insurance market tends to be more expensive than the group coverage offered by most employers.

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Health care legislation seems to be evolving almost faster than the media can keep up, and now on the heels of one major health care shift, the notion of taxing health insurance plans may be abandoned as well.

Just this week the much-debated public option was likely abandoned in favor of a low-priced, national health insurance plan, alongside a probable revision of Medicare that will allow coverage of millions of Americans.

And now, the plan to tax so-called "cadillac" health insurance plans in order to boost revenue is under fire as well.

The argument is coming from a surprising direction: Unions have long been Obama supporters in the insurance fight, but their concern is that taxing what is known as "high value insurance plans" won't just hit CEO's but also middle class Americans.

According to the Associated Press' article on health care legislation, many of those Americans chose to forgo salary increases in order to negotiate for better health benefits. Taxing them would unfairly burden these people, and the results could be financially devastating.

The other option, which the Union supports, is a tax increase on those who make more than $500,000 a year and couples making more than $1 million. Such a tax hike would go far in alleviating the debts that will be accrued in the face of the nearly $1 trillion dollar health care bill currently debated in the Senate.

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It's confusing, really, figuring out what is and isn't on the table for Medicare in the current health care legislation.

But according to the article at Reuters about potential Medicare law, there could be both cuts and expansions in the future.

How will this be managed? Probably via lowered services for some people.

How can people protect themselves from these lowered services? With Medicare supplemental insurance.

The article states that under the most recent proposals on the table, Medicare would be available to Americans as young as 55 and who lack affordable coverage.

But at the same time the program could be facing cuts up to $500 billion dollars. Granted many of those cuts are supposed to come out of fraud and other misappropriations, but it's hard to say exactly what will and won't be cut.

This means that while more people will have access to Medicare, those who are younger and don't have as many health complications probably won't have the best coverage.

Unless they pay a little more for it. In other words, supplemental insurance.

Supplemental insurance is often purchased by individuals who feel that Medicare won't offer enough protection for them. Supplemental insurance might cover a more extended hospital stay, for example, than is offered via Medicare, or it might offer better hospice care or physical therapy.

Supplemental insurance is already very popular for those 65 and older, and if the current health care legislation passes at the end of the year, it might become even more popular in 2010.

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Individual health insurance has long been more costly than employer based coverage, due to a greater risk assumed by the insurance company.

However, the luxury of employer based coverage isn't protecting many workers these days, leaving the unemployed to struggle with the high costs of individual health insurance.

At the LA Times, the pending expiration of Cobra subsidies for the unemployed is predicted to leave millions without coverage.

Originally the subsidies were designed to help Americans "subsidize the often crippling cost" of purchasing individual health insurance.

However, the subsidies were only designed to last about nine months, and deadline which is about to expire. If these subsidies aren't extended, "hundreds of thousands will lose the subsidy each month" forcing them to pay 3 times what they're paying now.

And without jobs to help them cover expenses, few of them will be able to find affordable individual health insurance.

The White House wants to extend the subsidies, they just need to find the money to do so.

Hopefully upcoming legislation, and an upturn in our economy, will soon solve this problem for good.