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Medicare: drifting towards disaster Medicare is lurching toward disaster and it is too late for the Bush Administration and Congress to do anything about it, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said on Tuesday. He said the next administration will have to act to stop rising costs and get control of the $400 billion federal health insurance plan for the elderly, which now covers 44 million people. "Higher and higher costs are being borne by fewer and fewer people. Sooner or later, this formula implodes," Leavitt said in a speech to the right-leaning Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute think-tanks. "There is serious danger here," he added. "Medicare is drifting towards disaster." Leavitt's speech echoes repeated warnings from other federal government officials who have noted that Medicare spending is projected to be 3.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2009. A separate report released on Tuesday from the National Cancer Institute estimated that Medicare spent $21 billion on cancer alone between 1999 and 2003. "The disaster is not inevitable. If we act now, we can change the outcome. In health care, the core problem is that costs are rising significantly faster than costs in the economy as a whole," Leavitt said. But the administration of President Bush and the current Congress are out of time, Leavitt said. "So, given the strong possibility this won't get fixed in the next 266 days, I would like to add some general advice on the creation of a political construct for action and a general strategy to solve the problem," Leavitt said, saying he was speaking as a Medicare Trustee and not as a government official. Leavitt said paying for each medical action separately is wasteful and "it often results in bad referral decisions, sloppy hand-offs, duplications, fraud, and poor quality of care. The result is inappropriate care and unnecessary cost." Last week the Government Accountability Office blamed HHS in part for this, saying the agency had not used its powers to force hospitals to provide better care and less waste. "It troubles me that this matter is not receiving more attention in the presidential candidates' discussions. The next president will have to deal with this in significant part," he said. Dr. Cinque's comments: I wonder what he meant when he said that Medicare should not pay for each medical procedure separately. Perhaps he wants HMOs to cover seniors "for whatever ails them" and be paid a set fee per person. But that just passes the insurance aspect of it along to another entity, and I don't see how it will save any money. One way or another, the taxpayers will still get stuck with the bills; that's for sure. I have a very eerie feeling about the coming Medicare crisis because I personally know individuals who are around my age (close to 60) who are already saying: "If I can just make it to 65, then I'll be eligible for Medicare, and my worries will be over." But as with Social Security, once the Baby Boomers start flooding into Medicare, it's going to be another "perfect financial storm." It isn't realistic to think that my generation will receive the same benefits from Medicare that our parents received. There are just too many of us, and the money won't be there. So the benefits will have to be reduced. That may involve raising the age of eligibilility and increasing the monthly premiums. But even with that, I expect the quality of care to suffer. I anticipate there will be a "two-tier" system, in which those depending on Medicare will deal with long lines, long waits, and rigid, inflexible standardizations, while top-flight innovative care will still be available to those who can afford to pay. In other words, I am referring to the same kind of "two-tier" system that exists right now in many countries that offer universal health care to their citizens. To those of my peers who can't wait to tap into Medicare, all I can say is: be careful what you wish for. E-mail to a friend Previous Article Next Article |
