Obesity is growing military concern
The warning by retired American generals of the widespread unfitness of today’s youth to serve in the armed forces is shocking. It’s particularly troubling for Mississippi.
According to the generals, this state has the highest ineligibility rate in the country at 76%, as compared to an unflattering national average of 72%. The disqualifiers include lack of education, criminal background, substance abuse or medical conditions. The No. 1 medical disqualifier is obesity.
America’s weight trouble doesn’t just pinch the military. It is driving up health-care costs and reducing workplace productivity.
If we don’t get a handle on the problem, our national security and our standard of living could be at stake.
Tim Kalich
Editor and Publisher
Greenwood Commonwealth
Forget adding to Medicare benefits
Big Pharma doesn’t have many friends these days. The pharmaceutical companies have acquired a reputation for price-gouging and unscrupulous marketing practices, such as pushing highly addictive painkillers as a suitable treatment for chronic pain.
Even those Americans who aren’t incensed about the opioid epidemic are not happy with how much many brand-name drugs cost. The astronomical price tag for these medications is helping to drive up the cost of health care, which, in turn, increases private health insurance premiums and government outlays.
For years, Congress has been talking about trying to get drug costs down, and President Donald Trump has said it’s a priority for his administration, although he’s done little to effect any change.
Last month, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed H.R. 3, better known as the Lower Drug Costs Now Act. A major provision of that bill is that it would allow Medicare to use its considerable buying power to negotiate lower drug prices. These anticipated savings would not only benefit seniors. The lower prices also would be passed on to those covered by private insurance or Medicaid.
The president and the Republican Senate are unlikely to go along with H.R. 3. They argue that cutting drugmakers’ profits will cause them to invest less in the research and development of new beneficial drugs, the end result of which will be much more costly than the savings that price negotiation would produce. The president’s Council of Economic Advisers has estimated that if HR. 3 becomes law, its purported $34.5 billion a year in savings will be drowned out by $375 billion to $1 trillion a year in higher costs as a result of people dying sooner or suffering more than they otherwise would have.
That comparison is probably exaggerated, and the projected savings from H.R. 3’s backers may be as well. If there are, however, true savings to be had from price negotiation on drugs, H.R. 3 has the wrong idea of what to do with the money. The bill would create new dental, hearing and vision benefits covered by Medicare.
The Medicare program, even with an extra $34.5 billion a year, can’t afford to add new benefits. That’s what got it into its current financial pickle.
Fourteen years ago, during the George W. Bush administration, prescription drugs were added to Medicare benefits without a sustainable way to pay for them. As a result, the program has been speeding even faster toward insolvency. Current projections are that in just six years, Medicare will not have enough money to cover all of its claims. Either providers, already screaming about declining Medicare reimbursements, will have to take even less, or beneficiaries will have to cover more of the cost of their medical treatment.
Any savings to be had from negotiating drug prices needs to be used to cover the existing costs for doctors, hospitals and medicine rather than adding new layers of them.
Americans must face demographic reality. As our nation’s population ages, there are too few workers paying into Medicare to cover what retirees are drawing out. If anything, the situation calls for benefit cutbacks, not expansions.
Tim Kalich
Editor and Publisher
Greenwood Commonwealth
