There is a grave need of plans to be entrenched within the general description of managed competition, a concept that amalgamates reliance of private initiative with government to assure a level playing field”. Bipartisan Commission approach that identifies middle ground on the future of Medicare draws important administrative rules for government and private plans. This approach should give no room to the government to exercise dirt politics of financial favourism, but to instead invite all plans to compete as level playing field created by government rules.
The government should use a Bipartisan Commission proposal drafted by Senators Breaux, Frist, Kerrey, and Hagel to establish an array of minimum benefits all plans must provide and perhaps a second level minimum to including prescription drugs in a second level. Reducing the full cost of premiums for persons of low income, the amount of the subsidy to be determined by the market. Regulations and Financial Actions. One approach calls for governmental intervention through a combination of regulation and financial action that pays for new benefits, or changing its payment to providers or health plans.
The health care infrastructure in many rural communities is financially fragile and thus especially sensitive to changes in Medicare’s principle. ” Clinic Director in Wisconsin. Also there’s an approach that relies on actions of privately based health plans and providers to extend cost effective services to beneficiaries for example by allowing private plans to bid for Medicare business in mutually inclusive way. In the early 1990’s a popular approach to expanding access to health insurance was applying managed competition, whereby government regulation would set the parameters within which private plans could fairly compete.
The Intersection of Rural Place and Medicare Policy. Any assessment of Medicare program changes should consider rural impacts. In doing so each elements of the Medicare policy should be evaluated within different types of rural environments. Thus incorporating descriptions of rural areas as well as different Medicare policies. It is however an impossibility to incorporate all potential combinations of these two variables. Since both localities exhibit a constant change. There is need to create a frame of reference for all persons engaged in open forums about resuscitating Medicare policy.
The interaction of policy, people and place has special meaning for rural beneficiaries and the meaning changes with the particulars of the policy and the local circumstances facing the beneficiaries. Outreach Funding. Adequate funding for outreach efforts to educate and enroll rural and frontier people in programs such as CHIP and Medicaid for which they may be already eligible. Better data on the uninsured and underinsured and about how their care is being provided. Graphic and cultural, as well as economic factors should closely be analyzed.
Banishing Categorical health care and social services are essential in rural communities, where resources and providers are limited. To attain this state of equilibrium in Medicare provision in rural America as in urban-policy making should not differentiate data as rural or urban instead they should demand impeccable data that describes rural programs and outcomes in order to have a clear picture of what is happening on the ground. HHS has the audacity to integrate its own programs and policy initiatives that would rather help the states and rural communities to do the same.