Tom Gibson, of Senior Market Services Inc, say(s):
February 9, 2009

I find it curious that people keep comparing Original Medicare with Advantage plans. Medicare is a dinosaur that has no preventative or dental benefits, out of pocket maximum and many other differences. Providing only Medicare is not a good policy decision as the economic effects of deferred primary care will always be higher and have a larger negative impact on our economy and our work force. To be only paying $8.5 billion for all of those benefits seems like a bargain compared to the alternatives. Every time someone spends a dollar in our health care system it has a negative impact on the total resource endowment so making investments early when they make the most sense is the way to go.

I think some people need to be careful what they ask for. Getting rid of privatization could have unintended consequences. This fascination with the finance side of our health care delivery system is interesting but doesn't address the problem we have with providers being totally out of control and actually being incentived to commit fraud and abuse of the billing system, especially the government-run side of the billing system where there are no controls whatsoever.