The New Con
The “medical-industrial complex” has come forth with their latest con: saving $2 trillion in health care costs.
While Krugman thinks it is nice that they have decided to get involved with the process, this paragraph is all I need to know it’s a con [my emphasis]:
The signatories of the letter say that they’re developing proposals to help the administration achieve its goal of shaving 1.5 percentage points off the growth rate of health care spending. That may not sound like much, but it’s actually huge: achieving that goal would save $2 trillion over the next decade.
So, they say that costs were going to grow at $400 billion a year, but they only grew at $200 billion a year, so they saved us $200 billion. Yeah, right.
How are they going to achieve these savings? Why, by screwing around with people’s health care, of course. The Republicans don’t want “government bureaucrats” making health care decisions, but don’t have a problem with insurance company bureaucrats doing it. The problem for the Republicans is that people on Medicare already know that doctors make health care decisions, not “government bureaucrats”.
Single payer saves $350 billion a year by dumping these parasites, so let’s save the additional money.
[More on this from Lambert at Corrente.]
