Saving Medicare: Lessons from Canada

1. June 26, 2013 Saving Medicare: Lessons from Canada Benjamin Day Director of Organizing Healthcare-NOW! David Himmelstein, MD SteffieWoolhandler, MD, MPH Professors, CUNY School of Public Health Co-Founders, PNHP healthcare-now.org pnhp.org

2. Medicare Signed Into LawJuly 30th, 1965

3. 2009 Medicare Trustees Report:Insolvency by 2018 ($billions)

4. Under ACA: Medicare Trust Fund Exhausted in 2026 (early as 2019)

5. Graph source: Medicare Spending and Financing: A Primer, Kaiser Family Foundation, 2011.

6. U.S. Spends Almost Double Next Highest Spending Country

7. U.S. Health Care System the Sixth Largest Economy in the World

8. What’s right about Medicare

11. What’s wrong – Incomplete Coverage

13. Wealth Matters Planning for Retirement? Don’t Forget Health Care Costs “Medicare . . . Covers only 51% of health care services. . . . For a 65 year old couple retiring this year, the cost of health care in retirement will be $240,000.

15. What’s wrong – Privatization Pubic money with private control :

17. Despite Medicare’s Lower Overhead, Enrollment of Medicare Patients in Private Plans Has Grown

26. Canadian Medicare- a true single payer 1 – Covers everything 2- Covers everyone 3 – Public service model that restricts

27. Cost Control in a Parallel Universe: Growth in Medicare Spending Per Senior in the U.S. and Canada, 1980-2009 Source: Himmelstein & Woolhandler, Arch Intern Med, December, 2012

30. How Has Canada Controlled Costs? Lower administrative cost - 16.7%v 31.0% (U.S.) Lump-sum, global budgets for hospitals with stringent capital control of new buildings and equipment Single buyer purchasing reins in drug/device prices Exclusion of private insurers - private plans overcharged U.S. Medicare by $34 billion in 2012 Source: Himmelstein & Woolhandler, Arch Intern Med, December, 2012

31. Take Action for Medicare’s Birthday, July 30, 2013! healthcare-now.org pnhp.org