And President Obama has proposed changing how Medicare sets its payments to doctors and hospitals.
At the same time, supporters of Medicare set up the National Council of Senior Citizens.
Medicare sets the baseline for doctors' pay, tilting disproportionately to procedure-oriented specialties.
Medicare sets standard rates for treatments and insurers negotiate with hospitals.
Medicare sets physician payments under a formula that has been widely criticized, but so far Congress, which oversees the program, has not addressed some of the issues involved.
Medicare "set the bar so high, no new technology would be able to survive," said Dr. Michael Poon, a New York cardiologist who is the CT society's current president.
In some cases, a doctor could buy the drugs for about 20 percent below the price Medicare set for the drugs, which are given intravenously in a doctor's office.
Not only is the number of people claiming Medicare set to double by 2030, but the cost of providing health care for each beneficiary is likely to double too.
Mark Parkinson, president of the American Health Care Association, the largest trade group for nursing homes, says the problem is that reimbursement rates for Medicaid and Medicare, set by government agencies, do not pay them enough to offer their employees medical coverage.
Medicare sets the fee f for a unit of service.
The White House would let Medicare set prices for the most expensive drugs; force drugmakers to pay bigger rebates to the government when Medicare beneficiaries buy medicine, like they do under Medicaid; require pharmaceutical companies to disclose their justifications for the prices they charge; and crack down on deals drug companies make to delay generic drugs from reaching the market.
