Healthcare Reform Should Begin With Medicare

The president spoke about healthcare reform again yesterday. The president seems to enjoy reciting the same talking points repeatedly, especially the innocuous platitudes everyone agrees with. We all agree healthcare is a huge problem and a major stumbling block for our economic recovery and long term prosperity. We all agree something needs to be done. We all agree reform will not occur unless we take action. The president added a factoid I had not heard before that, without reform, in 30 years $1 out of every $3 our economy produces will go to pay healthcare costs. (Within a decade it will be $1 out of $5.)

The president says he wants healthcare insurance for everyone in America, dispensed through a system that will allow everyone to select their own doctors and their own care, while saving taxpayers boat loads of money over the long term. How can anyone argue with those goals? However, is such a healthcare insurance plan possible? If the president thinks so, he needs to start showing us exactly how it would work. It is not obvious how his plan can add nearly 50 million of the currently uninsured to a reformed system that will maintain quality and availability of healthcare while saving taxpayers money. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that reforming healthcare will increase our budget deficit more than $1 trillion over the next decade, and speculates that it will ultimately be paid for with $600 billion from raised taxes and approximately $400 billion in cost savings from cuts to Medicare. Raising taxes makes no sense in this economy and Medicare cost savings will likely reduce the quality and availability of care for seniors.

The president denies allegations that he is seeking a single-payer insurance program sponsored by government, and claims his plan will enable us to keep our current insurance programs, if we so choose. However, some democrats and some republicans are skeptical, but for different reasons. Some democrats are betting that no one will want to keep their current insurance once they see the superiority of a government-sponsored plan. They believe the American public will abandon its current insurance plans and opt into the government plan. The republicans expect the government to artificially under price their plan until they drive private profit-making concerns out of business. Either way, America will end up with a single-payer insurance program, sponsored by the government. It will be the government’s way or the highway.

The obvious prototype for a new government-sponsored insurance plan is unfortunately Medicare, which continues to be a huge financial drain on our government and taxpayers. By the way, some believe that the availability of private insurance to supplement Medicare is the main reason Medicare works as well as it does. What happens if those private supplemental plans disappear?

Prudence and common sense should suggest that the president should do his best to fix Medicare before embarking on his ridiculously ambitious plan to overhaul our entire healthcare system. It should occur to him that if he is successful in demonstrating that he can devise a better and more cost effective Medicare program for our seniors, we would be far more confident in his plan to reform healthcare for the rest of us.