When considering that
Republican and Democratic Party politicians have put U.S. citizens in debt to
the tune of $14 trillion, the sum of $48 billion seems like chump change. Yet,
factor in the figure of $12.7 billion during a discussion on healthcare
insurance and something interesting is revealed.
The Government Accounting
Office recently released a report saying Medicare squandered $48 billion
through fraud and improper claims during fiscal year 2010, while the top 10
health insurers in the country made a combined $12.7 billion in profit.
Put another way, for every
combined dollar those evil private insurance companies made, the government
program lost $4 of taxpayer money.
As the GAO report said in its
opening statement, “Medicare remains on a path that is fiscally unsustainable
over the long term.”
The report also said its calculation
did not include those made in the Part D prescription drug benefit.
Making the numbers even more
interesting—and demonstrating how inefficient the government system is— is that
Medicare covers 47 million people while the private companies cover more than
200 million. Consider how bad things would be if a government healthcare
insurance program had to cover more than 300 million people.
The GAO considers Medicare
“high risk” because of complexity and susceptibility to improper payments and
said the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency that
administers Medicare, has not met the GAO’s five-point criteria for removing
the high-risk designation.
The nine-page report, “MEDICARE
Program Remains at High Risk…” can be found at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11430t.pdf
What all this boils down to is
that government programs are not efficient. They cost more than private sector
programs that do the same thing when those private sector businesses compete
for a profit based on a market share of voluntary customers.
Granted, governments can be
efficient at times. As the saying goes, Musssolini got the trains to run on
time, yet it’s unlikely that people here would want to live under Il Duce’s type
of fascist regime. Nor would they choose to live under the socialist regimes
that exist today in North Korea or Cuba where healthcare is free. Even Michael
Moore hasn’t moved to Cuba.
Programs such as Medicare and
Medicaid are well intentioned. Many of the supporters of Obamacare are
well-intentioned people. But, good intentions don’t make for good programs,
especially when those programs are not economically sustainable or otherwise
not within the proper purview of government.
The former Soviet Union wanted
to supply goods and services to its people and those of us who spent the bulk
of our lives experiencing the cold war likely recall the film footage of Soviet
citizens standing in long lines waiting to buy scant supplies of food and
toilet paper. That government failed from start to finish. Meanwhile, the free market here in the U.S.kept store shelves full.
There are legitimate functions
of government—police, military, courts—as it serves its only legitimate
purpose, protecting the rights and liberties of individuals—all individuals who
have not been found guilty of violating the rights of others.
Things go sour, badly so, when
a government violates that restriction. Good intentions won’t change that fact.
As is said, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
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Accurately stated!
It is hard to imagine an editorial further off target.
It is a symptom of the billions of dollars that the right wing, businesses and our educational system spend in engendering a false conception of reality throughout our country.
Let’s step back for a moment. We have a Healthcare “System:>)” that costs three times as much as the average of the developed world and produces results equivalent to second and third world countries (Cuba is ahead of us in critical measures of effectiveness). The CIA places us in the mid forties in country rankings on infant mortality and life expectancy.
The editorial writer is wallowing in the chump change of the health care debate. Is he/she not aware that Bush gave away $500 billion to the drug companies in a bill that barred the government from bidding for the type of discounts that huge organisations routinely obtain?
Even the $500 billion is in the second tier of cost issues. We waste close to a trillion dollars a year relative to the rest of the world simply on paper shuffling. This is largely insurance companies trying to avoid paying claims or trying to pass them off to another insurance company.
The people who are committing the fraud are those in the private sector; toxic Republican legislators are those who are trying to stop them being brought to account
Medicare is the most efficient deliverer of healthcare in the whole “System” The $48 billion in fraud originating from the private sector is chump change relative to the efficiency of the Medicare payment system. As noted above, it is Republicans in Congress that are preventing the elimination of Medicare fraud.
While the profits of $12.7 billion are egregious (a properly run system would involve no profit at all) the number is a red herring. The real issue is the unregulated supply of services ($7 trillion a year) where costs are raised continually without reason.
The arguments about Governmental inefficiency vs. the Private Sector are laughable in the extreme. The civilized countries of the world all have government run programs and they are all much less expensive and much more effective than ours (over 40 other counties).
Obama care is a nasty compromise (we should move directly to a Single Payer system). The reason that it is a nasty compromise is the billions of dollars that the industry and the right wing spend to brainwash a semi-illiterate electorate to vote against it’s own interests.
God help us. The Chinese not only have vastly more competent people running their country, they can do the right thing instantaneously. In a few decades we will be consigned to a footnote in history.
The US already has universal health care–what we do not have is universal health coverage. We pay more for healthcare in taxes than any other country with universal health coverage. We surpass all the other industrialized European social welfare states when it comes to government (not privatized!) healthcare spending. In 2009 we spent 17% of the GDP, $2.5 trillion, on healthcare expenditures, and that figure is predicted to rise to 25% in 2025. Even uber-Socialist Sweden spent 15% less than the US on public health.
Quite honestly, I cannot fathom why, if we must pay taxes (and nothing is more certain in life, it seems;), we cannot have our undeclared wars AND universal health coverage–at minimum, some measure of catastrophic coverage for all citizens! The money is obviously there, despite the incessant doomsday whinging on certain fronts. If the Pentagon and Congress are able to run wars on two fronts ad infinitum at debilitating cost to the taxpayer (and now this latest foolishness in Libya), surely a concerted effort to come up with guidelines for universal health coverage shouldn’t be impossible. Such a plan cannot be worse than the healthcare debacle we have now, in my view.
Germany, Switzerland, France, UK, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Italy, Spain, England–these countries are hardly fascist regimes. In these countries, and others, health coverage is considered a basic right of the citizenry, whereas in this country it is a privilege to those who can afford it.
Health insurance premiums have risen at an alarming rate. I am soon facing having to pay $600 per month for health insurance, for myself alone!—and that’s just not an option I’m willing to take. Indeed, whilst I would not particularly wish to live in Cuba or North Korea, I will admit that, as I am getting older, any of those other countries seem rather appealing to me right now.