by Jack Lee
Currently the state’s are paying about 20% of their budget on Medicare and Medicaid. If we just add more people to this system under the dems new plan without correcting for the waste and fraud we are headed for a colossal failure. This is a no brainer, you can’t keep doing the same dumb things and expect better results.
Medicare and Medicaid are broke, actually worse than broke – they owe, and now the government wants us to believe they can manage universal healthcare? Then government needs to show us they can manage Medicare and Medicaid effectively first. As it stands these programs represent hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded mandates. A frequent complaint from the medical community is their payment schedule is so unrealistically low that most doctors won’t accept their subscribers. If private medicine paid as poorly as Medicare we would soon have a doctor shortage.
According to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud Medicare and Medicaid made an estimated $23.7 billion in improper payments in 2007. These included $10.8 billion for Medicare and $12.9 billion for Medicaid.
If the Obama Administration wants to show us they can lower the waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid first, that’s a good start. Then he should come up with a real workable plan. This new plan must be crafted using a blue ribbon panel of experts in the field and of course include the insurance companies. If he would do all that, maybe we could get behind it. But, as it stands we’re being sold a great unknown, on weak assurances. We’re looking at unsustainable cost increases of about 8% per year and this is going to result in dramatically increased taxes to fund the new healthcare system – there is no way around it.
Look at what we’re seeing in Medicare right now (8.8% per year increase), this is the government run plan! Obama’s healthcare is too poorly thought out and too much is based on unrealistic data that has been discredited by the President’s own GAO. Unfortunately, private insurance premiums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9% and that means reform to the private sector is needed, but Obama’s plan isn’t it.
Everything Obama and the democrats say about cost saving is simply not supported by any credible evidence. In fact its just the contrary. Democrats have a whole lot of explaining to do before they will get anywhere on a socialized medicine plan.
Fix Medicare and Medicaid first Mr. President – then maybe you will have enough credibility to be trusted with more:
Nearly one of three claims (29 percent) Medicare paid for durable medical equipment was erroneous in FY 2006. (Inspector General report, Department of Health and Human Services, August 2008)
Medicare and private health insurers pay up to $16 billion a year for needless imaging tests ordered by doctors. (American College of Radiology, 2004)
Every $1 the U.S. government invests in combating Medicare and Medicaid fraud saves $1.55. (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2009) Yet Medicare spends less than two tenths of a cent of every dollar of its $456 billion annual budget combating fraud, waste and abuse. (Miami Herald, August 11, 2008)