Three Ways To Save Medicare Paul Ryan Doesn’t Want You To Know About
ThinkProgress has assembled three different policy options that, if enacted, could help Medicare’s future financial issues and save the taxpayer billions of dollars:
1. Empower Medicare To Negotiate For Lower Drug Prices: One policy option that would be very simple to enact and would not require any sort of increased spending or expansion of government would be to simply allow Medicare to use its bulk purchasing power to negotiate with drugmakers for lower prices. The program is currently banned from doing so, thanks to the clout of the drug industry. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) estimates that doing this could save as much as $156 billion over 10 years.
2. Allow Drug Reimportation From Canada: One of the major costs in the U.S. health care system that drives up the costs not only in the private sector but also among Medicare are the costs of prescription drugs. One very easy was to greatly relieve this cost is to eliminate protectionist barriers and allow the free importation of prescription drugs from our neighbors like Canada. A failed measure proposed by Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and John McCain (R-AZ) to do exactly that in 2009 estimated that doing so would save consumers $80 billion over ten years.
3. Globalize Medicare: Another protectionist barrier and detriment to free trade in the U.S. health care system is that seniors currently aren’t allowed to use their Medicare insurance system outside of the United States. An alternative to this would be to drop these trade barriers and allow seniors on Medicare to seek care abroad, where services are much cheaper. Economist Dean Baker estimates that if fifty percent of Medicare beneficiaries opted for this globalized option, then taxpayers would save more than $40 billion a year by 2020. President Obama dismissed this option when asked about it at a recent town hall meeting.