Why is health care so expensive?

Sorry for the scanty blogging lately. The goings on in D.C. and Palm Beach have been so bizarre I haven't known how to react. Anyway, I want to draw your attention to this quite lengthy essay by Matt Stoller. Go ahead and read it, you'll probably learn a few things. Anyway, let's put this together with an essay by Krugthulu on the inane "Department of Government Efficiency." He goes through several reasons why Muskmelon has no idea of what the federal government does or how it spends its money. (Actually, most of Muskmelon's own fortune comes from federal tax dollars, but he seems unaware of that.) Then we get to health care. It seems the illegal immigrant Neonazi has noticed what I have had on the banner of this blog for many years, and he even Xcreted this image:

 

 

 

Sure enough. But this isn't government spending.  On the contrary, the purely government funded and government operated insurance programs -- that's classical Medicare, the VA, military -- have very low administrative costs. And as a matter of fact, the Medicare program has succeeded in essentially leveling off costs per beneficiary in the past decade or so. As Stoller explains, private insurers have very high administrative costs partly because they spend money on denying claims, and partly because that's a way of keeping more of the money they get from employers and taxpayers. How that works is a little bit complicated but basically they aren't just insurers, they also own hospitals and physician practices and they are paying themselves with your money.

 

Anyway, as Krugthulu goes on to explain:

 

But the program faces a threat of rising costs due to, you guessed it, privatization: a growing number of seniors have bought Medicare Advantage plans, which funnel taxpayer money through private insurance companies, and there’s growing evidence that these plans have become a major source of, well, waste, fraud and abuse. The Wall Street Journal reports $50 billion in outlays for diseases doctors no longer treat. Some estimates suggest that overbilling by Medicare Advantage plans may cost taxpayers more than $100 billion a year; United Healthcare lost a big lawsuit over that practice.

Somehow, though, I very much doubt that DOGE will recommend rolling back Medicare privatization.

Now, in the end none of this may matter. The real purpose of DOGE is, arguably, to give Elon Musk an opportunity to strut around, feeling important. And while it’s a clown show, these clowns — unlike some of the other people Trump may put in office — won’t be in a position to inflict major damage on national security, public health and more.

But it is a clown show, and everyone should treat it as such.