Medicare: Back in the U.S.S.R.

by Regina E. Herzlinger
MANHATTAN INSTITUTE/WALL STREET JOURNAL

Excerpt:

"With the effective passage of the Medicare drug bill, we have just vastly
enlarged the health-care sector.

This is the one-seventh of our GDP that is run Soviet-style: where the doctors
who are uniquely qualified to create and manage health-service businesses are
prohibited from owning most of them; where entrepreneurs often must pass a local
government smell-test before they are permitted to build new facilities; and,
worst of all, where government dictates the prices and exact characteristics of
the insurance benefits for which it will pay. Most private health insurers
follow its lead.

Small wonder that health-care costs rise at double-digit rates, while the rest
of our economy perks right along.....
Medicare is set up as a command economy much like the
old Soviet Union..."

For full article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106981424344498200,00.html

For more on Medicare
http://www.ncpa.org/iss/hea/