Fix Medicare First

IBD.com ^ | July 9, 2009

[Kaslin]

Health Care: President Obama says a new public insurance plan is needed to keep private companies "honest." Well, to be honest, there's already a public plan, and it's hurtling toward insolvency.

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The administration and congressional Democrats tell us they're working to reform health care in America. We'd be more inclined to believe them if they started by reforming a program that badly needs it. Instead, Medicare is the elephant in the room: Everybody knows it has huge problems, but few Democrats want to mention them. We can see why.

Medicare's performance puts the lie to Obama's claim that a public plan would "force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest." On the contrary, the public plan is more likely to force private players from the field and then break the bank.

The latest report of the Social Security and Medicare trustees says Medicare's fund for paying hospital costs is due to run out of money in 2017. Last year, it was 2019. How would a new, even broader public plan, once entrenched as a monopoly, be different?

Medicare's main problem is economic. It pays providers based on the procedures they perform, not their success at keeping patients healthy. It rewards inputs, not outcomes, and tends to steer providers and patients toward the more costly course of action.

Merely monitoring a slow-growing cancer ("watchful waiting" in health-speak) may be just as effective as expensive surgery or radiation treatment. But the high-cost treatment will be reimbursed unless it is clearly out of bounds medically.

[Kaslin]

Ping

[taillightchaser]

All the entitlement programs are going in the tank. So lets create another one. Sounds like a logical idea to me.
The zero administration is going to destroy our country.
Will the sheeple ever wake up????

[Kaslin]

slowly.

[applpie]

Exactly. How can you trust an organization that loses $50 billion a year (in errors and overpayments) to manage a national healthcare system?