Medicare Persuasive Essay
IF THE POLLS ARE TO BE believed, most American seniors love
Medicare. It's easy to understand why: When seniors are sick, they get care, and the bills get paid. When a senior citizen walks into a storefront health clinic and seeks treatment--a prescription drug, say, or some sort of physical therapy--the service is performed and the patient walks away feeling better, if only because he knows that whatever the bill might be, the taxpayers will pay for it.
Doctors generally don't love Medicare as much as seniors, mostly because the program's reimbursement rates to health care providers are somewhat lower than the rates paid by private insurers. But doctors do love one thing about socialized health care for the elderly: its certainty. Seniors …show more content…
But that's just a fraction of the total problem.
Cited Resources: Google
According to a 2011 report from the Government Accountability Office,
Medicare makes an estimated $48 billion in "improper payments" each year, an estimate that's almost certainly lower than the actual amount since it doesn't include bad payments within the prescription drug program. Some of that money, perhaps a lot of it, is fraud, but experts differ on exactly how much. On the very low end, the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association has estimated that about 3 percent of all U.S. health care spending is fraud.
Assuming fraud is distributed equally across payment systems, that would mean Medicare's share is roughly $15 billion a year. But almost all analysts believe fraud is much more common in Medicare than in it is in payments by private insurers. Toward the high end, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) once suggested the number could be as much as $80 billion a year. In March, the executive director of the National Health Care Fraud Association told members of Congress that total health care fraud losses likely range from
Medicare. It's easy to understand why: When seniors are sick, they get care, and the bills get paid. When a senior citizen walks into a storefront health clinic and seeks treatment--a prescription drug, say, or some sort of physical therapy--the service is performed and the patient walks away feeling better, if only because he knows that whatever the bill might be, the taxpayers will pay for it.
Doctors generally don't love Medicare as much as seniors, mostly because the program's reimbursement rates to health care providers are somewhat lower than the rates paid by private insurers. But doctors do love one thing about socialized health care for the elderly: its certainty. Seniors …show more content…
But that's just a fraction of the total problem.
Cited Resources: Google
According to a 2011 report from the Government Accountability Office,
Medicare makes an estimated $48 billion in "improper payments" each year, an estimate that's almost certainly lower than the actual amount since it doesn't include bad payments within the prescription drug program. Some of that money, perhaps a lot of it, is fraud, but experts differ on exactly how much. On the very low end, the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association has estimated that about 3 percent of all U.S. health care spending is fraud.
Assuming fraud is distributed equally across payment systems, that would mean Medicare's share is roughly $15 billion a year. But almost all analysts believe fraud is much more common in Medicare than in it is in payments by private insurers. Toward the high end, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) once suggested the number could be as much as $80 billion a year. In March, the executive director of the National Health Care Fraud Association told members of Congress that total health care fraud losses likely range from