BuckeyeBlog

Michael Cannon at the Cato Institute has a great article in National Review Online about why the universal coverage supported by many liberals may have some very bad consequences for your health:

Federal bureaucrats have announced that, as of this month, the Medicare program will no longer provide financial rewards to doctors and hospitals who harm patients.

That is not a typo. For more than 40 years, Medicare has provided financial rewards to providers when a patient requires follow-up care following a medical error.

Medicare is America’s experiment with universal coverage. Operated by the federal government, it provides health insurance to more than 40 million elderly and disabled Americans.

When Congress created Medicare in 1965, physicians feared the new program would reduce their incomes and autonomy. To reduce physician opposition, Congress adopted the dominant way of paying physicians at the time, known as “fee-for-service” payment. As the name suggests, when a physician provides a service, he collects a fee. Provide another service, collect another fee — ad nauseam. Physicians like fee-for-service payment, and have lobbied to preserve it. …

When a patient requires follow-up care to repair the damage done by a medical error, how does Medicare respond? It pays providers for the “care” that injured the patient, and then pays them again to repair the damage. Imagine paying your contractor more because he knocked down the wrong wall. …

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This article via Glenn Reynolds is a nice one about Freddie and Fannie. I’ve been being warned about this since I started as a newspaper reporter in 2000 for a small business paper. It’s a bit tricky; both that professor that bent my ear and Bainbridge are at risk of the stopped clock scenario; they’re right twice a day, etc. (How’s that for an anachronism).

The real issue Bainbridge touches on at the end: Freddie and Fannie can go to pot, as people have been predicting for 20 years or more they would. What’s really going to happen, though, is that with all the nonsense about Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and a list that is literally endless, since our great politicians, Democrat and Republican alike, want to add to it every day, the American government itself is going to be recognized as a fraudulent bankrupt.

It’s not an if. It’s a when.

“Doctors have complained for years that Medicare payments have failed to cover rising costs.”

Apparently some fool built fiscal responsibility into the Medicare program. Formulas require a cut in payments whenever the budget is blown, which is, let’s see, every period it’s measured. Or so this article implies, anyway.

Then Congress rushes in, ever the hero, and takes firm action. It waives the fiscal responsibility requirement, so everyone can pretend there’s no problem.

As Father PJ says, if you think health care is expensive now, wait ’til it’s free.