It would be far less costly if a nurse visited you at home to make sure you were taking your medications, a common practice in other advanced nations. But nurses don't do home visits to Americans with acute conditions because hospitals aren't paid for them.
America still spends about over $19 billion a year fixing medical errors, the worst rate among advanced countries. Such errors are the third major cause of hospital deaths.
One big reason is we keep patient records on computers that can't share the data. Patient records are continuously re-written and then re-entered into different computers. That leads to lots of mistakes.
Meanwhile, administrative costs account for 15 to 30 percent of all health care spending in the United States, twice the rate of most other advanced nations.
Most of this is to collect money: Doctors collecting from hospitals and insurers, hospitals collecting from insurers, insurers collecting from companies or policy holders. A third of nursing hours are devoted to documenting what's done so that insurers have proof.
Cutting back Medicare won't affect any of this. It will just funnel more money into the hands of for-profit insurers while limiting the amount of care seniors receive.
The answer isn't to shrink Medicare. It's to grow it -- allowing anyone at any age to join.
Medicare's administrative costs are in the range of 3 percent.
That's well below the 5- to 10-percent costs borne by large companies that self-insure. It's even further below the administrative costs of companies in the small-group market (amounting to 25 to 27 percent of premiums).
And it's way, way lower than the administrative costs of individual insurance (40 percent). It's even far below the 11 percent costs of private plans under Medicare Advantage, the current private-insurance option under Medicare.
Meanwhile, as for-profit insurance companies merge into giant behemoths that reduce consumer choice still further, it's doubly important to make Medicare available to all.
Medicare should also be allowed to use its huge bargaining leverage to negotiate lower rates with pharmaceutical companies -- which Obamacare barred in order to get Big Insurance to go along with the legislation.
These moves would give more Americans quality health care, slow rising healthcare costs, help reduce federal budget deficit, and keep Medicare going.
Let me say it again: Medicare isn't the problem. It's the solution.
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