Charles Pick on In My Tribe

[Charles Pick]

It's not politically feasible to pass legislation that does this, but it is feasible to weasel around with medical treatment protocols and the regulation of how much is paid for what procedures. The propaganda tack can be seen in this NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/05/upshot/medicare-budget-threat-receded.html

If you can quietly pivot to "Canadian Healthcare" (a euphemism for killing government patients in the Soviet style), you can fix the government's budget problem and spend the money on some other set of stupid things.

[forumposter123@protonmail.com]

Sort of.

It's certainly easier to have CMS pass new regs then get a bill through congress. But both insurers and doctors are the recipients of that money and they are powerful lobbyists to keep the Medicare gravy train rolling. They tried to reduce trend on Medicare Advantage a year ago and they started running ads that CMS was secretly cutting Medicare.

Per capita medicare spending is in the short term going to be dominated by baby boomers retiring. Most Medicare spend comes at end of life so having more 65 year olds will temporarily lower per capita spend, but it can always go back up as they age.

Also, Medicare is subsidized by commercial insurance so eventually Medicare pay rates will have to rise as there are more Medicare members and fewer commercial payers.