Medicaid Made $19 Billion in Improper Payments, And We Want the Government to Run Health-Care?

The president wants to provide universal health-care to all Americans. But the government already runs Medicaid, government health insurance for low income people, so it seems logical that we should look at how efficient that program is run before deciding whether the government should run our health-care also.

Medicaid paid out $19 billion in improper payments last year alone. And these payments for the most part were not fraudulent claims that were filed, they were government errors.

most of those payments were the result of errors, not deliberate fraud

   The government wasted $19 billion of taxpayer money on Medicaid because of their own ineptitude. That number would surely grow in proportion to the amount of people added to the health-care system once all Americans are covered under the government health-care plan.

  But maybe the Medicaid example is the exception to the rule. Maybe the other government programs are run more efficiently than Medicaid. Not! Medicaid’s improper payments only account for about 25% (and considering that Medicaid is just one program that represents a huge percentage of the mismanagement of funds by the government) of all of the government’s improperly paid benefits.

According to the report, the U.S. government made an estimated $72 billion overall in improper payments last year. Of that total, Medicaid doled out almost $19 billion. Seventy-seven other programs were responsible for the remaining $53 billion

  And there were 11 more programs which did not report estimates. We are closing in on government run programs improperly paying $100 billion in benefits and we want the government to run the health-care system?

  But just in case you are still on the fence about the government running health-care, don’t forget that the president hasn’t even fill out the department of Health and Human services yet– the department that will be in charge of overseeing the health-care system.

  When the government gets involved in issues where they don’t belong there are only two things that we can count on.

1. The government will screw it up

2. The cost will go up

  As P.J. O’Rourke once said, if you think health-care is expensive now just wait until it is free.

 Truer words have never been spoken.