Friday, August 27, 2010

Secretary Leavitt Op-Ed on Medicare Reform

In case you hadn’t seen it, wanted to pass on this excellent op-ed by former HHS Secretary Leavitt in this morning’s Washington Post outlining why the Medicare trustees report presented an illusion of reform to that troubled entitlement program.  The article does a good job explaining the double-counting and unsustainable/unrealistic savings projections that underpin Democrats’ assertions regarding Medicare’s solvency, and then makes the trenchant observation that “the Medicare bureaucracy, even with the Independent Payment Advisory Board attached to it, does not have the capacity to engineer a more efficient health delivery system through complicated payment regulations.”