Philadelphia Reflections

The musings of a physician who has served the community for over six decades

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New topic 2019-05-24 20:49:32 description

Medicare Frugalness Incentive

Future Medicare costs are more predictable verbally than with data. Half a dozen diseases make up most of the cost of Medicare, and it can be predicted that research will eliminate some of them. Although at first the new cost of treatment will raise costs, eliminating the disease will eventually lower them. The last year of life will almost certainly remain expensive because everyone will eventually die. In that sense, it is easier to predict continuing high costs for the last year of life, than for Medicare as a whole, except for scientific progress driving disease out of lower age groups into Medicare. In fact, the enduring costs of the last year of life are about the only thing predictable about Medicare. So the old folks needn't worry; no one will seriously propose eliminating the program until the future becomes clearer.

However, diseases will surely be eliminated, longevity will increase, and the last year will be expensive. It seems rational to give Medicare recipients the same incentive to be frugal about spending which younger ones get from Health Savings Accounts: if your medical costs go down, we will transfer the savings into retirement funds which many of you badly need. In the case of Medicare beneficiaries, that probably means transferring them into current Social Security payments. Another purpose is also served, which is to make the offer while there are no surplus funds. It would serve the purpose of assuring the elderly that funds going into their medical care will be diverted to the consequences of good care, which is improved longevity. The consequences of not staking out this position in advance might be, just might be, the diversion of funds into battleships, sugar subsidies, and other worthy causes. And having been shown clean hands with this proposal, perhaps the seniors would calm down and consider other proposals about Medicare.

For example, how the books are kept. Medicare is funded by three sources, the wage tax on working people (3%) of their income, the premiums the old folks pay, and the subsidy from the general fund. However, the money is not put into a big Medicare pot but rather designated to particular parts of the program. The fiction is maintained that hospitals are almost entirely funded by the wage withholding tax, more or less guaranteeing that the hospitals will be paid, no matter what, because the wage tax has already been collected as cash in hand. The rest of it is less certain subsidies and premiums, much of it borrowed from foreign nations. You can see the hospital lobbyist in this: hospitals get paid first, no matter what. And so far, it hasn't mattered much, because everyone got paid in full. But however meaningless, it represents a give-back which the hospitals would probably be reluctant to give up.

Since it represents a reason to resist reductions in Medicare funding by the federal government, it potentially stands in the road of gradually reducing Medicare funding for other purposes. Including shifts from medical care to retirement funding, let's say. And it serves no other purpose I know of.

Originally published: Tuesday, May 24, 2016; most-recently modified: Thursday, May 23, 2019