> unnecessary tests or fraud or overpaying for things?
Glad you ask. That was the job of the Attorneys general to figure out. A core part of their task was finding and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.
They were fired almost day one of the Trump admin. DOGE's notion that the actual gov spending was in the employees was laughable. If we actually wanted to eliminate waste then we should have put more employees in the AG and IRS, not done mass firings from those agencies.
The other part to mention is that Medicare Part C, putting public dollars into private insurers, has lead to a huge amount of the fraud. Those useless tests have often been done by these private insurance agencies because they can easily bill the government for them.
Eliminating that public/private partnership is exactly what will save money. Our inefficiencies are largely due to our reliance on the private sector to backfill what the government isn't doing.
> They were fired almost day one of the Trump admin.
And then they hired different ones. Which in and of itself has nothing to do with it.
> The other part to mention is that Medicare Part C, putting public dollars into private insurers, has lead to a huge amount of the fraud. Those useless tests have often been done by these private insurance agencies because they can easily bill the government for them.
That's not the half of it though. The entire US healthcare industry is full of corruption and inefficiency. In general it's the providers who want the unnecessary tests, not the insurance companies.
> Our inefficiencies are largely due to our reliance on the private sector to backfill what the government isn't doing.
I feel like this is why we never solve it. The Democrats insist that the only solution is for the government take the whole thing over, the Republicans point to people in France waiting a year for an appointment and then nothing changes because they're both taking money from the industry so neither of them are trying to fix the real problem.
Because what you need is to set up non-emergency care to have actual competition. If you need an X-ray some time in the next month, a computer gives you a list of every office with an open appointment, their price and their distance from you. The providers charge between $50 and $200 but some are closer to you or have sooner appointments, the insurance pays $50 no matter where you go and then you get to pick but you pay the difference.
You need the patient to have the ability to say "you know what, the one that's 10 minutes closer isn't worth $120 extra" and pick the less expensive one, because then they actually have the incentive to get prices under control, instead of the current insanity where just getting them to tell you how much something is going to cost is like pulling teeth and the government subsidizes getting your health insurance through your employer in the tax code to keep it that way.
Glad you ask. That was the job of the Attorneys general to figure out. A core part of their task was finding and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.
They were fired almost day one of the Trump admin. DOGE's notion that the actual gov spending was in the employees was laughable. If we actually wanted to eliminate waste then we should have put more employees in the AG and IRS, not done mass firings from those agencies.
The other part to mention is that Medicare Part C, putting public dollars into private insurers, has lead to a huge amount of the fraud. Those useless tests have often been done by these private insurance agencies because they can easily bill the government for them.
Eliminating that public/private partnership is exactly what will save money. Our inefficiencies are largely due to our reliance on the private sector to backfill what the government isn't doing.