A number of commentators have talked about how bizarre it is that senior citizens are saying they want the government to stay out of their health care, to keep its hands off Medicare, when it is the government that provides Medicare. But those commentators are missing the point these seniors are really making.
Sure, the government pays for Medicare, but it’s a fee-for-service plan; i.e., seniors get to pick their own doctors, and they don’t have some government agency telling them what care they can or cannot get (except on the edges).
What seniors are worried about is President Obama’s reform turning Medicare into a giant HMO which limits their ability to see the doctors they want to see or which tells them certain medicines or treatments too expensive, whether for everybody or, especially, for someone their age. Probably not an unreasonable fear.
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