Medicare/Efficiency?

http://www.examiner.com/a-564555~Is_Medicare_the_more_efficient_plan_.html

Interesting editorial and I absolutely don’t trust it.

Here’s why: Matthews’ article here reads like a critique of Medicare’s efficiency and throws around a lot of numbers that indicate that Medicare is far more efficient than private-sector health care administration. This inclusion suggests two factors that support the author’s integrity if not his premise. First, including the numbers and some discussion about what they mean and how they were come by indicates that Matthews was actually looking at facts and figures rather than spewing opinion or, worse yet, propoganda designed to mislead. Second, he garners the appearance of impartiality by including numbers that did not support his premise.

What is suspicious to me is that he doesn’t include any numbers at all to support his own premise. He wraps up his argument in one paragraph by dismissing the relevance of the figures because the average age of Medicare recipients is so much higher than that of private insurance recipients. His claim is that since the average Medicare recipients’ benefits are higher, that inefficiency must therefore also be higher.

That claim seems suspect as well. I get that economies of scale favor fewer recipients with greater benefits, but by how much? If the average annual payout to a Medicare recipient is 2.4 times greater than the payout to a private healthcare recipient, does that translate to two to three times the overhead necessary that Matthews’ own numbers indicate? And if that is true, why can’t he provide some facts or figures to back up his claim? Did he just run out of space at the end of the piece and edit out the parts that support his thesis?

I came away from this article with a definite feeling that I’d been lied to. Here’s the thing that nags at me: when someone goes to the trouble to lie to me, I assume that it’s because the truth does not support their premise.

But here’s the other thing that nags at me: if someone would write an article like this that is so transparently misleading, is it because he expected no one to pay enough attention, or because he is pro-single payer and wants to undermine the arguments of those who oppose single-payer health care by association? If it’s the latter, it’s a gutsy propoganda move.

I suspect that it is the former, so this one article has tipped this on-the-fence voter a bit more in favor of candidates that support a nationalized health insurance system.