To stop spiraling government health costs, Congress should consider making wealthy Medicare recipients pay more, and require Medicaid recipients to join health maintenance organizations, Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said Friday.
But Bennett, chairman of the Senate Republican Health Task Force, predicted Congress will move slowly and carefully with any changes, because health care reform is becoming like the electrified third rails in subways - "You touch it and you die," he said.Bennett's comments came at a health-care policy seminar sponsored by the National Governors Association.
"We should not spend Medicare funds on millionaires so their descendants can inherit more," he said - but added that is currently happening.
So he suggested making senior citizens pay higher shares of the medical costs now paid by federally funded Medicare - based on their income and assets.
Bennett also said moving Medicare and Medicaid recipients into health-maintenance organizations or other managed-care groups may also help save money.
He said such moves in a pilot project in Tennessee - where Medicare costs for the poor had increased an average of 20 percent a year for a decade - held increases last year to only 1 percent.
He said much of the savings came because recipients stopped using expensive emergency room care for non-emergency problems because of easier access to doctors. He said participants also report liking the HMOs more than their old care.
"That's a politician's nirvana - having better feelings toward a program that costs less," he said.
While Bennett recommended consideration of such changes, he said he has written no such bills - and his task force has not yet even studied such changes.
Bennett said the group has mainly considered lessons learned from health-care reform battles last year, which he called, "last year's train wreck."
GOP senators have decided, he said, not to offer any vast omnibus reform bill, but to offer smaller changes in separate bills.
He said uproar over what turned out to be unpopular reform proposals last year by President Clinton "may be more responsible than any other thing for Republicans taking control of the Senate."
So he said Republicans will take a "very careful approach. There isn't the enthusiasm to rush into it . . . No one wants it to blow up in their face like last time."