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| Senate Slashed Medicaid; How House Can Still Save Much of ItAdding Personal Responsibility Can Save Hundreds of Billions of Taxpayer Dollars
But more than half of those savings can be achieved much more fairly and humanly by using a technique recommended by the 50 states' health insurance commissioners; Requiring the tiny fraction of Americans who deliberately impose huge unnecessary cost burdens to accept personal responsibility can save more than half the billions of Medicare dollars the House bill claims to achieve, and it will save tens of thousands of American lives each year, claims public interest law professor John Banzhaf. . . Today more than half of the total cost of Medicaid is caused solely by the tiny minority of U.S. adults who insist upon smoking despite the huge costs their smoking imposes on our economy; more than 6 trillion over 10 years, 2.4 trillion in overall health care expenses, and over $500 billion in Medicaid health care costs. So one way to slash the proposed costs of Medicaid by more than 50% would be to begin imposing personal responsibility for unhealthy lifestyle choices. Require those who currently enjoy Medicaid insurance at taxpayer expense to either quit smoking, or to pay the huge costs which their smoking now imposes on the great majority of American taxpayers who do not smoke, suggests Banzhaf Instead of broadly slashing Medicaid benefits across the board, thereby especially impacting the majority of current beneficiaries who may not be able to do much to help themselves, imposing personal responsibility upon those who balloon the costs of medical services - by asking them to quit smoking or pay for the huge medical costs they now impose on others - would help solve much of the problem, says Banzhaf, who helped persuade Congress to adopt the 50% surcharge on smokers under Obamacare based upon research he did for the NAIC. Although fewer than 12% of U.S. adults still smoke, cigarette smoking cost the United States more than $600 billion in 2018, including more than $240 billion in healthcare spending. A whooping 21.5% of that was imposed upon Medicaid, with only about 8% being paid by Medicare, and about the same for private health insurance. So if the majority of smokers were to quit, the program would save over $50 billion a year in Medicaid health care costs; more than half of the cuts in Medicaid spending now being sought in the House version. One way to do this would be to require smokers to pay the excess costs their habit now unnecessarily imposes in order to keep their current Medicaid health insurance coverage http://banzhaf.net/ End
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