The big and bloated Medicare system costs Americans far too much and ought to be thoroughly overhauled.
Just how serious the problem has become should be clearer as a result of hearings held this week by the Senate subcommittee that overseees Medicare appropriations.Consider, for example, the wide discrepancy the subcommittee found between the $280 a month that Medicare pays to supply ailing Americans with oxygen in their homes compared to the $107 the Veterans Administration pays for the same service.
Why such a big difference? It seems the VA and various other governmental and private groups get competitive bids on their oxygen systems. Medicare, however, establishes a fee schedule that often bears little relation to actual costs.
This finding - and the oxygen supply situation is just one of many similar instances - lends credence to estimates by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human services that the government could save $300 million a year just by changing Medicare's purchasing practices.
Consider, too, the instructive experience of Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who conducted this week's hearings. Though Medicare pays $178 for a glucose monitor, Harkin got one from a local discount store for only $45. Only after considerable prodding from Harkin did HHS decide to lower the price paid by Medicare. The decision was made last January. But the bureaucratic red tape is so extensive and complicated that the Medicare price won't be lowered until the end of the year - at the earliest.
Does anyone still wonder why opinion polls show the great majority of Americans are fed up with the federal government? Clearly, the public's perception that Washington is too big and too wasteful is rooted in solid fact.