Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Page 7
AFFAIRS OF STATE (Column)
Obesity Coverage Threatens Medicare’s Balancing Act
By DAVID KLINE
Medicare is getting fat and happy, but it won’t be long before the excessive weight catches up with the program—and the taxpayers who support it.
Last year, Congress and President Bush added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, necessitating billions of dollars in new spending when the benefit kicks in. The law included some money-saving reforms, too, but not enough to compensate for the cost of the drug benefit.
This month, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced that Medicare is moving toward labeling obesity as an illness, with treatment covered by the national health insurance program.
Both of these additions are good news for people who use a lot of drugs or doughnuts, but neither is going to extend the solvency of Medicare. Earlier this year, the program’s trustees reported that Medicare was going to run out of money in 15 years if no changes were made. Now, with changes being made that will increase spending, one must assume that the day of reckoning is even closer at hand.
This should cause us to pause and think about why Medicare was formed in the first place. It was created to ensure that, as President Lyndon Johnson said when he signed the Medicare legislation in 1965, we would not “spurn those who suffer untended in a land that is bursting with abundance.”
“No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine,” Johnson said. “No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years. No longer will young families see their own incomes, and their own hopes, eaten away simply because they are carrying out their deep moral obligations to their parents, and to their uncles, and their aunts.”
Supporters of Medicare expansion might say prescription drugs and obesity treatments are part of the “healing miracle of modern medicine,” and therefore should be covered.
But let’s not forget the last part of Johnson’s speech—the part about young people having their incomes and hopes “eaten away” because they are paying the medical bills of older family members.
Today’s young people are paying the medical bills not just of family members, but of older people everywhere. As the ratio of workers to retirees drops, the young workers are going to have to sacrifice more of their hopes and dreams and finances to support retirees who receive Medicare and Social Security.
Should these young workers sacrifice still more to pay for weight-loss treatments for people who refused to look after themselves?
Radley Balko, an analyst with the Cato Institute, doesn’t think so. Medicare’s decision to consider covering obesity treatments “further moves the private matter of weight out of the realm of personal responsibility and into the realm of ‘public health,’” he says.
“Obesity isn’t a disease,” Balko adds. “It’s a condition that’s both treatable and preventable, in most cases without drugs, doctors or hospitals.”
Balko is right, but so are those on the other side who say treating obesity is cheaper than waiting for an overweight person to need acute care for a heart attack or stroke.
It is a balancing act. Elderly poor people need to be taken care of. Young workers need to have a chance to pursue happiness and protect their own financial future. All of us need to take responsibility for our own actions before trying to shift the responsibility to the taxpayers.
Not that we don’t have a little wiggle room. The American Pet Products Manufacturers Association reported last week that we spend $34.3 billion a year on our pets. Billions more are spent on video games, movies, fancy clothes and a variety of vices, so there are opportunities for belt-tightening to save money for real necessities.
But Medicare should not exempt itself from the belt-tightening. If the program continues heading toward fiscal obesity, it, too, will suffer health problems.
— Capitol News Service
Copyright 2004, Metropolitan News Company