Harvard Professor Malcolm Sparrow estimates that more than 20 percent of Medicare and Medicaid spending may be wasted through fraud. And Medicaid’s internal inspector admits the program has no way to track waste, fraud or abuse. No wonder Sparrow’s book is titled, “License to Steal.”
Medicare is already bankrupting states across the nation. So what’s the big liberal idea of the week? Expand the program.
The Senate’s proposed Baucus bill (which isn’t really a bill, since the Finance Committee hasn’t bothered to write it down) would supposedly provide health insurance to millions more Americans. But nearly half of them would simply be dumped into Medicare. That’s not a solution; it’s merely a way to create a new problem. “Nobody’s going to put their state into bankruptcy or their education system in the tank” for Medicaid expansion, Democratic Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen told The Washington Post over the summer.
It’s ironic that liberals, who claimed to worry that George W. Bush wanted to use anti-terrorist FISA legislation to listen to their phone calls (all of them) and read their e-mail (even the spam) are eager to have the government-run health care.
After all, if the liberal dream comes true and the federal government becomes the sole provider of health care, it will have an interest in virtually every aspect of our lives. Look no further than North Carolina, which recently announced it will punish state employees who don’t take care of themselves.
“Tobacco use and poor nutrition and inactivity are the leading causes of preventable deaths in our state,” Anne Rogers, director of integrated health management with the N.C. State Employees Health Plan, told the Raleigh News & Observer. “We need a healthy workforce in this state. We’re trying to encourage individuals to adopt healthy lifestyles.” The state will “encourage” that by charging overweight individuals or those who smoke more for health insurance.
Once the government is in charge of health care almost everything you do -- what you eat, how fast you drive, whether you have a pet -- will be a federal concern. Denying care will be about the only way the government can hold down costs, so it’ll look for any excuse to do so.
Is that the goal of the liberal “thinkers?” Or is this potential outcome merely a happy coincidence? One suspects liberals really have no idea.