The letter repeats a frequent talking point about Medicare’s low administrative costs but doesn’t mention that Medicare has extremely high levels of waste, fraud and abuse. When you’re spending other people’s money there isn’t much incentive to be careful with it. When Medicare was passed, it was projected to cost $12 billion by 1990. The actual cost was $98 billion – yeah, that’s a track record to bet on.
Another argument in the letter is that Obamacare is badly flawed and our healthcare system is compromised due to the “corporate profit motive.” This completely overlooks the presence of numerous not-for-profit players in U.S. healthcare, both providers and insurers. Also, if you truly believe that our government will design and run healthcare to please corporations, why would you want to turn even more control over to them?
The letter also argues that the U.S. spends more on healthcare to get worse results than other countries. This ignores the fact that we have more obesity, violent crime, auto accidents and other factors that increase costs in the U.S. Trying to make decisions using half-baked statistics is not a good idea.
The letter argues that our “fragmented” system is the big problem, but without multiple players there is no competition. Compare the service you get at the DMV to any service where you have a choice of providers. And keep in mind the scandals at the Veterans Administration, where bureaucrats falsified reports regarding poor quality of care to collect bonuses. Do you think anything’s been done about that?
One last point about Medicare’s ability to control costs (government is great at that, right?) – Medicare is notorious for underpaying healthcare providers.
Other healthcare consumers pay a surcharge to cover for Medicare’s underpayment, but once they’re abolished there won’t be anyone for Medicare to cost-shift to.
Governments can’t control costs, but they can control prices and Econ 101 tells us that price controls lead to shortages. Ask the people of Venezuela how that’s working out.
Steve Metz
Peachtree City, Ga.
