A quartet of Republican senators propose doing away with Medicare and enrolling the nation’s elderly in the for-profit insurance that covers federal employees and members of Congress.
As imagined, the change would save trillions.
Money would be saved because the market is magic. When flesh and blood government employees provide a service to people it costs X number of dollars. When flesh and blood employees of a health insurance company provide a service to people, it costs X minus Y number of dollars. Why? Because the market is magic. Must be: there is no this-world explanation.
If you don’t believe in the magic of the market you are a socialist. Either that or you’ve been looking around.
Here are a few of the things you may have seen:
— Much of the savings that the Republican Four have conjured up would come from raising the eligibility age for post-Medicare coverage from 65 to 70. Another huge chunk would be saved by requiring the elderly with incomes above $100,000 a year to pay much more for their coverage and require all of the enrollees to pay more than they do today. In a nutshell, the plan shifts costs from government to the elderly.
— Nothing in the plan controls increases in health care costs. But the inexorable advance of those costs, plus the equally uncontrolled and uncontrollable rise in the number of retirees are the major threats to Medicare.
— Americans pay twice as much, or more, for health care than do the citizens of any other wealthy nation. The United States is the only wealthy nation that does not have a single-payer health care system, or the equivalent. There is no way to reduce the cost of health care without giving the paying agent at least some control over services provided and prices paid.
IF YOU LOOKED back as well as around, you would have learned or re-learned the reason Medicare was created was that the private health care system in 1965 wasn’t working for seniors. A great many elderly Americans couldn’t afford physicians and prescription drugs. They suffered grievously in consequence.
Congress could see the need to make health care affordable for those who were no longer working and created the program that the Republican Four — Senators Rand Paul, Jim DeMint, Mike Lee and Lindsey Graham — now want to take private and water down.
Those who look around diligently also will discover that health insurance companies are among the most profitable businesses in the United States and will wonder how exchanging a government program for a private industry program will save money. Won’t shareholders still demand a return on their investments? Won’t CEOs still want to be paid as much as — or a little bit more — than other CEOs? Won’t the need to make money result in reducing the quality and quantity of services provided?
Finally, if government is going to pay 75 percent of the premiums, as the Republican Four propose, won’t that enormous budget item make the new Medicare just as subject to partisan politics as the old Medicare is today?
DON’T EXPECT ANY of the Republican candidates for the presidential nomination — with the possible exception of Ron Paul — to sign on to this crusade anytime soon.
— Emerson Lynn,jr.
