Opinion
Let Social Security recipients decline Medicare
Examiner Editorial
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March 30, 2009
Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., has the antidote for a poisonous bureaucratic rule that denies Social Security benefits to retirees who voluntarily decline Medicare coverage. Blackburn’s Health Care Choices for Seniors Act of 2009 would allow people to choose their own health care coverage without forfeiting the Social Security benefits they earned. Congress ought to pass Blackburn’s much-needed bill without delay.The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services currently threatens seniors who want to decline Medicare Part A benefits with the loss of their Social Security checks. Given the fact that Medicare is currently $32.3 trillion in the red – an amount more than twice the entire GDP of the United States – HHS should be encouraging more pre-qualified people to waive health care benefits to which they are legally entitled. Instead, HHS forces them to accept Medicare benefits they already paid for – but don’t want. This is crazy.
Which is why former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and four others filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court last October challenging the government’s position. As Examiner columnist Quin Hillyer points out, it not only contradicts the Medicare law itself, but provisions of the Federal Employees Health Benefit plan as well. But so far, Judge Rosemary Collyer has not granted Armey and his fellow plaintiffs the permanent injunction they seek that would bar enforcement of this legally insupportable and patently ridiculous rule. Blackburn’s bill severs the Medicare/Social Security connection, allowing seniors to decline Medicare benefits in lieu of a Health Savings Account or other private health insurance plan. If just one percent of Medicare recipients voluntarily did that, the federal government would save $3.4 billion annually. Why does a government that is already $52 trillion in debt insist on digging the hole even deeper?
But saving money, as novel and welcome as that would be, is not the main reason Rep. Blackburn’s bill against what she calls “medical conscription” should be quickly passed and signed into law. The primary argument is one even members of Congress, cubicle dwellers at HHS, and federal judges should be able to understand: After being forced to pay into the Social Security system their entire working lives, retirees are entitled to those benefits without having to jump through any more bureaucratic hoops. Holding Social Security benefits hostage in this manner destroys citizens’ trust in the federal government’s pension system and is legally and morally indefensible.
