If The Government Can’t Get Medicare Right…

Here’s something I’ve had trouble understanding from the start.

Government already has one health care solution that it provides: Medicare.  How is it doing?

Well, we know that it has a problem with fraud—it’s a federal program with people that are enrolled around the nation, so it’s bound to be.  But I didn’t even know that it has had a lot of trouble figuring out how to calculate how much doctors should get paid.

Quoting an open letter from an NPR article, Rob at SayAnything shows us some interesting facts:

… in your report, Joe Califano, a chief architect of Medicare, admits that the first method of determining doctors’ pay was chosen for political reasons, namely, to buy doctors’ support for Medicare.

And multiple years later…

… your report ends with the admission that, because the current method isn’t working so well, Uncle Sam – 45 years after Medicare was launched – is still searching for a sound method for determining physicians’ pay. ¹

And yet we’re supposed to believe that the solution to a situation brought on by government, and mismanaged by government in the current incarnation, will somehow magically be done better because President Obama says so…

1. 45 Years After Medicare Was Created, Gov. Is Still Looking For Sound Way To Calculate Physician Pay [↩]