Commentary: Why be afraid of government? (Julian E. Zelizer on Medicare via CNN)

[pinto]

Commentary: Why be afraid of government?
By Julian E. Zelizer
Special to CNN

<snip>

The program (Medicare) succeeded. Government worked. Before Medicare started, only about 50 percent of Americans who were 65 or older possessed hospital coverage. Within five years of the program's creation, 97 percent of the elderly had hospital coverage. The same changes occurred with physician's coverage. Today, more than 40 million elderly Americans rely on the program -- as do their families who don't have to take responsibility for these costs.

Besides expanding coverage, Medicare has become instrumental to the health care industry. For all the complaints that we hear about Medicare, the reality is that most hospitals and doctors have come to depend on these federal payments into their system. Those who want to keep government "out" of the industry rarely acknowledge that government is already "in."

While doctors were at the forefront of the campaign against Medicare, they turned out to be among the program's biggest beneficiaries. As political scientist Jonathan Oberlander told Slate about the industry, "If they'd known how well they were going to do, they wouldn't have spent all those years opposing it. They would have said, 'Please pass this.' "

Medicare has also been able to accomplish the impossible: compel hospitals to change the way in which they charge for care. While policymakers had originally allowed hospitals to charge "reasonable costs" to the program, reforms in 1983 created the Prospective Payment System. Rather than paying hospitals for each patient they took care of, Medicare paid hospitals a fixed amount of money.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/27/zelizer.medicare/index.html?eref=rss_politics

[Demeter]

1. Oh, THAT Part of Government!

The police state is the part people ought to fear. Because a police state can twist the most benevolent program into a torture device.