Medicare, the huge government health program that serves 66 million senior and disabled citizens, is at a crossroads.
With huge demographic and fiscal challenges straight ahead, there are two dominant approaches at hand.
One focuses on improving and modernizing the program by building on the best features of Medicare’s popular system of competing private health plans, harnessing the benefits of personal choice and market competition. The other focuses on building up the powerful Medicare bureaucracy and doubling down on its complex system of central planning and price controls.
The Medicare trustees reported last year that the trends in Medicare administrative payment and price controls, governing both hospital and physician payment, already threaten seniors’ future access to quality care.
With the enactment of President Joe Biden’s absurdly named Inflation…
