Posted by Jonathan Adler:
Why Not Fix Medicare First?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_06_07-2009_06_13.shtml#1244470263
"Nearly 30 percent of Medicare�s costs could be saved without adverse
health consequences," according to the President's Council of Economic
Advisors. If so, [1]Virgina Postrel wants to know, why don't we fix
this before trying to make the rest of the health sector more like
Medicare?
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.
This is not a completely cynical suggestion. Medicare is, for
instance, a logical place to start to design better electronic
records systems and the incentives to use them. But you do have to
wonder why a report that claims that Medicare is wasting 30 percent
of its spending thinks it's making a case for making the rest of
the health care system more like Medicare.
More from Mickey Kaus [2]here.
References
1. http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/archives/003001.html
2.
http://slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2009/06/05/premature-orszagism.aspx
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