By Carl Berdahl, M.D.
Los Angeles Times, Letters, Dec. 13, 2012
Aside from partial measures like allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices, the best way to assure Medicare’s fiscal stability is to improve and expand the program to cover all Americans. The resulting single-payer system would slash wasteful paperwork and bureaucracy, yielding savings of up to $400 billion annually. Furthermore, young and old alike would have a clearer stake in sustaining a single, equitable system.
With the amount our nation spends each year on healthcare, we can afford to provide universal coverage. However, we choose not to. Instead, we waste money on private health insurance companies. While Medicare allocates just a few percentage points of its revenue to overhead, private companies spend about 15% on overhead and profits.
We should expand Medicare, the nation’s most efficient health insurance system, rather than cutting it.
Carl Berdahl, M.D., resides in Los Angeles.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-1213-thursday-medicare-costs-20121213,0,4441374.story