The number of Americans enrolled in Medicaid has increased from 29 million in 1990 to 73 million today — an increase of 252 percent over a period when the nation’s population increased 30 percent.
Total spending on Medicaid today is $574 billion, 275 percent above the $209 billion of 2000.
Medicaid amounts to about 40 percent of the total spending on the 10 largest means-tested federal government programs targeted at low-income Americans. According to the Congressional Budget Office, spending on these programs has tripled as a percentage of our GDP over the last 40 years.
Does all this mean we are becoming a more fair and compassionate nation?
That might have been the intention. But if we honestly look at what is happening, we will see things have gone badly astray.
Some perspective on this is available in a new article by Harvard University economist Edward Glaeser in the City Journal magazine of the Manhattan Institute.
More
DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
3 comments:
I think this means the healthcare industry is jacking up prices to a ridiculous level because they know the government is paying the bill. Either that or it is demonstrating how much true inflation exists with the US Dollar because it is being printed into oblivion.
The question missing is "cost to who" (patient, taxpayer, which taxpayers). Medicare recipients costs to patients have never changed. Obamacare isn't even about healthcare. It's about who pays for it. In the past, nobody paid drug companies and healthcare facilities for treatment given. Obamacare attempted to make the middle-class pay for it. Nothing ever changed in delivered healthcare itself.
I know someone who got fired from her job for not showing up to work on time and wasn't qualified for unemployment comp. because she was fired with cause. Then she got drunk and fell down and caused a serious bone breakage. Got to the hospital with no insurance, and no income. Guess what? Two weeks later she was bragging about how medicare paid for all her medical expenses. Why buy insurance? Or have a job, for that matter.
Post a Comment