Kozlowski: Health care plan not immune to Medicare’s flaws

The Obama administration, while pushing health-reform legislation, has often cast opponents as… The Obama administration, while pushing health-reform legislation, has often cast opponents as wild-eyed right-wing extremists who have difficulty thumping their Bibles against their chests because the bed sheets they are wearing get in the way. The other challengers are greedy capitalist swine in the insurance business, who oppose reform because it will prevent them from making obscene profits while laughing maniacally at the deathbeds of those denied coverage.

I oppose this bill, and I’m not a lunatic.

First and foremost, government administration of the health system would not be as efficient or cost-effective as the Obama administration would like us to believe. Why? Look at how government has managed programs in the past.

When Congress first passed Medicare, the estimates on its cost were much lower than they actually turned out to be, and the Washington Times notes that cost estimates on these sorts of programs are notoriously unreliable. This suggests that nobody actually knows how much this new bill would end up costing, and we might end up with huge cost overruns and the very increase in debt President Barack Obama says won’t happen.

Furthermore, investigations into Medicare have shown widespread fraud in the program. “60 Minutes” estimated“ that $60 billion dollars worth of fraud occurs each year in this program. Let’s put that number into perspective: About $259 billion was spent on Medicare in 2002 — meaning 23 percent of the payouts were potentially fraudulent. Using part of every $5 the government spends on Medicare, you could buy a couple of cheeseburgers and nobody would notice any difference.

This would appear to boost Obama’s assertion that eliminating waste and fraud would save a lot of money. But, how are we to believe that government-managed health insurance will not run into the same problems Medicare currently faces? The fact that corruption and waste has cropped up to such a large extent in a major government health-insurance program should give us pause. Even if nobody messes with Joe, even if Obama is able to keep a hawk’s eye on every last dollar of the umpteen-billion this thing is going to cost, what guarantee do we have that in five years we won’t have runaway corruption and waste?

Next, the very need for this reform doesn’t make sense. The stated goal is to provide health insurance to the 45 million Americans who don’t have it. My question is, then, what is the purpose of Medicaid? Medicaid was instituted to provide medical care to those who could not otherwise afford it. Indeed, it appears Medicaid already helps a lot of people this health-insurance plan is meant to aid. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the government department that oversees the program, “More than 56 million persons received health care services through the Medicaid program in FY 2005.” Granted, there are limits as to who can receive Medicaid. But still, covering 11 million more people than are estimated to be uninsured should suggest that an expansion of Medicaid, or a retooling of its provisions, would be enough to provide health care to those without insurance.

Ah, but what about those rascally insurance firms, the ones that don’t pay claims? Why should we expect the government to do any better with claims and approval of service? If a government-run insurance plan pays for every single claim that reaches it, then we’ll get precisely the kind of runaway fraud that plagues Medicare. This means there will be denial of certain claims, paperwork, a review process and bureaucrats making decisions about denied claims. Wait. Isn’t that what happens right now? Changing who makes decisions as to what claims are paid is not going to help.

How about runaway health costs? Again, I ask, how will government solve these problems? The government can say these are the prices that will be paid for health care. As any student of economics knows, this will cause a shortage: Fewer institutions will be willing to provide medical care, and more people will now visit the emergency room for a headache because, hey, doing so is much cheaper. All of a sudden, lines for care will get even longer. Lowering health care costs is not as easy as simply decreeing that they should be lowered. There are very real consequences for doing so.

For these reasons and others, the Senate must defeat this bill.

E-mail Mark at kozthought@gmail.com.