I'm in a hurry to run out and take some pictures before the sun rises too high on the horizon, but this post from Paul Krugman's blog is important.
The takeaway quote:
... we don’t have a Medicare problem, we have a health care cost problem. And Medicare actually does a better job of controlling costs than private insurers — not remotely good enough, but better.
If you look at Medicare in isolation, the cost rise looks terrible, because it is:
Source.
But it looks a bit different if you look at private insurance, too:
If Medicare costs had risen as fast as private insurance premiums, it would cost around 40 percent more than it does. If private insurers had done as well as Medicare at controlling costs, insurance would be a lot cheaper.
It’s a mystery why anyone claims that shifting more people into private insurance is a good idea.
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