It is an election year tradition, and this year is no different---Democrats demagoguing the issue of healthcare. Recently, after Donald Trump suggested cutting waste and fraud in entitlement programs like Medicare, President Joe Biden rushed out and accused Trump and Republicans of wanting to kill Medicare. This tactic has been referred to as "Mediscare" by critics.
But what if cutting or "killing" programs like Medicare wasn't such a bad thing? "There is a lot of gamesmanship being played among politicians to protect and increase the current system we have, even though it is fraught with fraud, abuse, and a lot of inefficiencies," says David Balat, president of Healthcare Finance Specialists.
Balat may have a point. These programs have been around for decades while healthcare costs have continued to explode, and new evidence shows just how bloated with waste and fraud they are. The latest Government Accountability Office (GAO) report reveals Medicare reported more than $51 billion in improper payments during the last fiscal year alone. And other government-run healthcare programs weren't much better. Medicaid reported some $50 billion in wrong payments, and Obamacare showed a 26% improper payment rate.
While politicians love to scare voters every two or four years about losing your healthcare, Balat says they're engaging in some misdirection. "When elected officials talk about healthcare, they're not really talking about healthcare, they're talking about health insurance," he tells KTRH. "Medicare, Medicaid, and all these other programs are not the delivery of healthcare, they are simply financial vehicles."
"What we need to focus on is the actual delivery of healthcare," he continues. "Instead, more and more of those dollars are being extracted by middlemen who have nothing to do with the delivery of care to the patient for whom those dollars are intended."
The bottom line is, when you hear a politician talking about protecting and preserving Medicare, they're really protecting an outdated, inefficient program that is loaded with waste and fraud. "We need to focus on the actual doctor-patient relationship," says Balat. "There needs to be some kind of mechanism where a patient can engage directly in a personal relationship with a primary care physician...that is the formula for fixing these programs."
Photo: Moment RF