We are often told by the advocates of government-run health care that a single-payer system would be innocuous because our masters inside the beltway would not actually own hospitals or employ clinicians. Well, the WSJ Health Blog demonstrates the vacuity of that assertion by explaining the latest P4P proposal from the single-payer system known as […]
According to the WSJ, the recent raid on WellCare was prompted by fraud allegations:
[The raid] was spurred at least in part by allegations that the company inflated the amount it spent on mental-health care in order to keep money it should have refunded to Florida’s Medicaid program.
But the allegations were made pursuant to a qui […]
Sigh …
Once again, a major provider of Medicare and Medicaid managed care plans has given the advocates of government-run health care a club with which to bludgeon free market reform. According to the St. Petersburg Times, the FBI descended on WellCare’s Tampa office on Wednesday morning:
Federal law enforcement agents executed a search warrant this morning […]
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Posted 24 October 2007
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The Cato Institute has published an excellent policy analysis that includes a scathing indictment of various attempts by government bureaucrats to restrict the personal autonomy and privacy of Medicare patients:
Over the past 20 years, the Medicare bureaucracy … has limited the freedom of Medicare beneficiaries to purchase medical services with their own money.
For example, if […]
Medicare, we are incessantly told by single-payer advocates, is a hugely successful program. In support of this assertion, they invariably claim that the program has been better at controlling costs than the private insurance industry. Well, here’s an article that illustrates how this brilliant “success” has manifested itself in many parts of the country:
According to […]
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Posted 24 September 2007
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Anyone with a clue how Medicare works will be amused by Ezra Klein’s recent post on the subject. Desperate to add something pithy to a Jonathan Cohn observation concerning that program’s huge cost, he delivers himself of the following howler:
And let me go a step further and mention the huge cost private insurance imposes on […]
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Posted 14 September 2007
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There has been a good deal of happy talk from the bird cage liners about Medicare’s new rule on medical errors. Unfortunately, the media (and even some health care bloggers who should know better) have it wrong.
Like most bureaucratic brainstorms, this latest CMS decree will almost certainly do more damage than good. Dr. RW has […]
The advocates of socialized medicine, particularly those pushing “Medicare for All,” peddle the myth that administrative costs are somehow lower for the government than for private enterprise. A classic example of such nonsense can be found at this blog, which features the following excerpt from a letter to the editor:
I find it highly disturbing that […]
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Posted 08 August 2007
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Kevin, MD links to a post at Movin’ Meat, in which Shadowfax provides a (reasonably accurate) description of the perverse reimbursement system facing ER physicians, including the following breakdown of payment rates by payer:
Bill Gates (cash customer): $474
Commercial insurance: $220-400
Medicare: $161
Medicaid: $90
Typical “cash customer” (aka uninsured) $25
Unfortunately, he fails to absorb the blindingly obvious implications […]
A standard feature of government-run health care is the dilatory adoption of new medicines and technologies. In Great Britain, for example, patients often have to go outside the NHS to access cutting edge treatments.
Sadly, as the NYT reports, the segment of American health care controlled by Washington suffers from the same bureaucratic inertia. The procedure discussed in the […]
