Soaring Medicare costs will soon make the recent economic troubles look like a drop in the bucket.
Maggie Mahar tries her best to address this in a recent paper, summarizing many themes from her blog. Suggestions include instituting a comparative effectiveness agency and increasing funding for primary care, as well as left-leaning suggestions like eliminating the bonus payments to Medicare Advantage and negotiation of drug prices with pharmaceuticals.
I would have liked to see her use some conservative ideas as part of the solution, such as whether health savings accounts can play a role, or addressing defensive medicine – which liberal wonks tend to ignore or discount – responsible for $210 billion of wasteful medical spending annually.
The bottom line is that a solution will have to blend ideas from both sides in order to have a chance of realistically passing.
Related posts:
- Medicare advice
- The real Medicare myth
- The Medicare cuts
- Fixing malpractice is a vital part of health reform
- Should Medicare pay for CME?
- Charging patients for Medicare cuts
- Work restrictions and the political spectrum
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$210 bil is defensive medicine. Another area of waste is unproven, gold plated, accreditation standards. It should not cost $100K to build a psychiatric bed in a hospital, when it costs $10k to build a similar looking hotel room. We should destroy medical rent seeking in the form of accreditation standards. Each requirement should be mercilessly challenged, and the individuals responsible for this rip off should be held accountable as individuals, even if government officials, especially if government officials.
Medicine is the most regulated service in America. The lawyers responsible for this worthless oppression should be made to pay.
End all garbage rules and regulations.
Eliminating Medicare Advantage is a small, but worthwhile step toward cutting Medicare costs.
Medicare Advantage currently skims about $15 billion annually from the Medicare fund, yet has demonstrated no better care than the standard plan. It’s just another gimme to insurance companies.
What are the conservative measures you’d like to see implemented? If you don’t care to enumerate them yourself, can you point to a blog that does?
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