Former Reason editor and Atlantic columnist Virginia Postrel highlights what she calls “a remarkably disingenuous report” by the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers on Medicare spending. The report claims that “nearly 30 percent of Medicare?s costs could be saved without adverse health consequences.”
30 percent? She says the forces driving costs skyward are “the usual suspects,” mainly patients receiving ineffective care and excessive administrative overhead. That said, if 30 percent of Medicare spending is, as the report suggests, unnecessary or even wasteful, then what’s the justification for expanding its reach to more people, as President Obama has proposed? Or moving to single payer, as many liberals prefer? It certainly wouldn’t seem to be a more efficient way to get treatments.
Meantime, Postrel adds:
Think about this for a moment. Medicare is a huge, single-payer,
government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for
experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash
health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare? Let’s see what “better management” looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country.
Of course, if you’re in need of an expensive treatment that insurance (private or government) won’t cover, why not consider getting it overseas? In this interview for Carolina Journal Radio, Rajesh Rao, CEO of IndUShealth, explains why many more Americans are traveling to India and other countries for medical procedures.
