Tyler Cowen on cutting Medicare costs
While there is no doubt that some of Barack Obama’s attempts to cut Medicare costs as a way to save some money to pay for his socialized medicine scheme are simply political shenanigans, George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen makes an interesting point regarding increasing Medicare efficiency.
In his article, “Something’s Got to Give in Medicare Spending” (NY Times, 6/13/09), Cowen makes some non-intuitive points that are quite important, not least being that “if we aren’t willing to take even limited steps to conserve resources, we shouldn’t be spending any more money elsewhere.”
Also, Cowen points out that critics of cutting certain Medicare expenses call such cost-saving measures “rationing", but argues convincingly – and in a way that I confess I hadn’t thought about – that those critics “are missing the point. The motivating idea is the old conservative chestnut that not every private-sector expenditure deserves a government subsidy.”
Professor Cowen’s article is well worth reading…
| Print article | This entry was posted by Rossputin on 06/15/09 at 01:23:18 am . Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. |
Yours truly
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06/15/09 @ 11:38:07 am
Certainly there is room to reduce the number of procedures etc. for some people, but the problem is of course who gets to make the decision.
My mother had colorectal surgery for colon cancer at the age of 83, and she had to go into a nursing home afterward as she had a minor stroke during the operation and she was now physicallly and mentally unable to care for herself properly. I was her medical proxy. (BTW, I live in another state.)
A year later, the oncologist office called and said she needed to have her annual follow-up colonoscopy. They really had no answer when I asked them about surgery again - what good was a colonoscopy going to do. Were they really going to use the results to recommend more surgery on a now-84 year old frail woman? No, it was just "called for" in the protocol. She did not have the procedure.
But what if I had wanted her to have it? How would the procedures be put in place (by an all caring government) to determine who pays for it. As I see it, these are the types of subjective questions that make the government's involvement in healthcare decisions so scary to me.