The Apostles Creed
Nov 30th, 2006 at 11:02 am by Susie
The reason I have so little respect for free market fundamentalists (and by that, I mean those who see it as an ideological, one-size-fits-all solution) is that reality has no effect whatsoever on their beliefs. When their policies fall short, as they inevitably do, they fall back onto the frat-boy “bad sex” solution: Why, we just need to do it harder! Faster! and then it’ll be fine! And then we’ll all be Da Man!
Like this:
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Private insurers in the Medicare insurance program were paid 12.4 percent more by the government than the health care provided would have cost under traditional Medicare, a report released on Thursday said.
Payments to private insurers were $922 more per enrollee in 2005 than they would have been to the government-run program, the report by the nonprofit research group the Commonwealth Fund said.
Private managed-care companies have taken a bigger role in Medicare, the health insurance program for 43 million elderly, after recent changes pushed by President George W. Bush and the Republican-led U.S. Congress.
Supporters argued that the extra payments were needed to lure insurers to the program, and that competition would drive efficiency at lower costs.
“If the purpose of having private plans in Medicare is to make private plans available at a lower cost, then why is the government paying so much more?” said Stuart Guterman, senior program director at the Commonwealth Fund and study co-author. “What it does is give private plans a leg up compared to the traditional Medicare program.”
So many of these true believers refuse to face the facts. Outsourcing was never really supposed to be cheaper. It was embraced by the Big Business party because 1) it weakens public employee unions, which they hate both on principle and in practice (because they vote Democratic), and 2) it gave them more political patronage to play with. Period.
Medicare, even despite its bureacracy and extensive provider abuse, is still historically better at cost containment than private insurers and has lower administrative costs. So naturally, conservatives are determined to undermine and, if possible, destroy it completely. After all, it proves that government programs not only work, they can be more efficient than the private sector.
Apostasy! Heretics!
The one item that this does not address is the level of service that the recipients are receiving. Do the people enrolled with private insurers see the doctor more regularly than traditional medicare patients? What about the cost of the overall care they receive, would medicare still be paying less if they were picking up the care for these people with the possibility of much higher cost due to less frequent preventative care visits.
Medicare is not the great program that some make it out to be for anyone involved. First off the recipents are left with substantial co-pays, often higher than those with the private plans. Example is that for this year the hospital co-pay for Medicare in Philadelphia is $952 which must be charged by the hospital and cannot be waived by law. That is much higher than the co-pays of many private plans.
Then for the providers Medicare says what they are going to pay regardless of the actual cost. Which makes providers do one of two things. First off charge more to others when they can and frequently this is falls on the uninsured/under insured. Secondly it forces the providers to play in gray areas of the law to look for reimbursement. Of course this leads to Medicare claiming fraud when no laws were technically broken and the providers paying settlements to avoid the protracted legal fights which would cost more even if they were successful.
This isn’t to say we don’t need Medicare, it is needed. It’s just that the program is in need of massive reforms. But anytime you mention any change/reform to the program there is such an outcry from groups like AARP that given the voting record of seniors no politican will actually stick their neck out to get the job done and done right.
I think that the American people are incredibly naiive not to see the level of corruption in their government.
People from other countries are much more realistic, and they realize that the politciians are paid - bribed - to allow this situations to exist. The only way to stop it is to take steps to remove the impact of money on government. We could start by forbidding corporations from spending their stockholders money on political lobbying of any kind. Also, political advertising should be limited, and the ads should be replaced by public forums in which the issues could be debated on their MERITS, and not just in 30 second sound bites.
Is “harder, faster,” becoming a theme?
It’s always been a theme. War, from this woman’s perspective, is almost always about whose is bigger, so the sexual metaphor applies.