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Recent Comments by mram
 | comment listing type: Top Sift for Dec 2nd, 2009Friends O' the Sift Top New Videos by Vote  Subscribe Top 15 Sifters of All Time Top 15 Sifters of the Past Week Newest Appreciated Comments          |
Congressman Weiner: "You Don't Know What Socialism Means!"
Medicare wastes a lot of money, sure. I wouldn't agree with the 25% ratio that is being parroted here. The point that is fundamentally missed is that if you compared Medicare "waste" to any other private insurance company's "waste" and incorporate in "overhead" (read as: any money that does not pay for a medical cost or service at an equitable rate) and you will easily see which service is more efficient. That is the fundamental point that Weiner has made.
There are no claims for perfection here. There is simply a claim that if you put PrivateInsuranceCo#27 and Medicare side by side and compared costs, Medicare would be better.
The important numbers are simply this: Money in to money out. How much money is actually going into an insurance company (including Medicare) vs. how much money is being used to pay for medical services? You bet your ass if you look at a private insurance company you're going to see a huge insulting ratio of costs that have nothing to do with helping me or you.
I did some armchair research and basically determined that most of the waste of Medicare are from doctors or services requesting overpayments on services where they used to entertain higher premiums from private insurance companies through what I can only consider nefarious purposes. Forgive my presumption (and I totally admit it) but there are a ton of services where you blindly accept the costs. For example, the medical industry has a huge stranglehold on people for patented medicines and cost-driven medication... that's not competitive at all, it's almost monopolistic practice.