CBSNews.com
Jan. 9, 2003
When Cure Is Worse Than Disease
By Dick Meyer, Editorial Director of CBSNews.com
The Republicans know exactly what they want to do to control the growth of health care spending; they want to make Medicare and other public programs more like private, market systems. More like managed care. That’s what scares me most.
Get this: in 2001, spending by Medicare increased by 7.8 percent, less than the measures of private health care spending. Health insurance premiums went up 10.5 percent and benefits were up 10.1 percent in 2001.
So why would putting more “managed care” in Medicare help control costs when it doesn’t work in the private sector. And cost containment is the Republicans’ primary goal.
What managed care did bring us medical consumers in the real world was less choice, less personal attention, more bureaucracy and more confusion.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/09/opinion/meyer/main535869.shtml