Medicare Pays More for Bad Care
From The Washington Post:
In a four-year period, 106 heart patients at Palm Beach Gardens developed infections after surgery, according to lawsuits and government records. More than two dozen were readmitted with fevers, pneumonia and serious blood infections. The lawsuits included 16 patients who died.
How did Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly, respond?
It paid Palm Beach Gardens more.
Under Medicare’s rules, each time a patient comes back for another treatment, a hospital qualifies for an additional payment. In effect, Palm Beach Gardens was paid a bonus for its mistakes.
Also:
Researchers at Dartmouth Medical School, who have been studying Medicare’s performance for three decades, estimate that as much as $1 of every $3 is wasted on unnecessary or inappropriate care. Other analysts put the figure as high as 40 percent.
Medicare currently makes up about 15% of all federal spending. With the incredible inflation of the payments, along with a much larger amount of people entering the years of eligibility, we should all hope that this system can be revised to keep the costs under control and not overburden the taxpayers.