[quote=jonnycsd][quote=patb]Reagan was utterly wrong about Medicare, what makes him right now?[/quote]
Medicare is a financial disaster. Quoting the Trustees of the medicare program: “Projected long run program costs are not sustainable under current program parameters.”
It has lower administrative costs (as a percentage of total expenditures) than any other insurance company in the country…
Of course, since the overall cost of healthcare has been going up at an alarming rate (as much as 10%/year), and the share of total population over 65 (eligible for Medicare) is expected to double by 2050, it will be increasingly difficult over time to provide the same quality of service to all eligible citizens on the same budget.
There’s one method that can potentially make a world of difference, it’s called comparative effectiveness research … basically, allocating some grant money to research that would compare different treatments and conclude how effective they are, and then use results of this research to save Medicare some money. But, for sume unfathomable reason, the Republican party is up in arms against comparative effectiveness. Some conspiracy theorists say that it is so because Republicans hate Medicare and they’d do everything to bankrupt it. And then we could go back to the they way health care worked in preindustrial era – when only rich people got proper healthcare, and poor people had to choose between working till the age of 80 or dying from some treatable disease because they couldn’t afford treatment.
