the program spent $6.7 billion (with a \u201cb\u201d) too much<\/a> for office visits and other services. And that\u2019s just in 2010; just one year\u2019s worth of fraud, abuse and\/or incompetence. <\/p>\nWe keep hearing about how this politician or another wants to save the government and the taxpayer money by eliminating this kind of waste, but it never happens. Here\u2019s one reason why. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs Medicare, said it doesn’t plan to review the excess billing payments that account for this because it isn’t cost-effective to do so. Essentially what they\u2019re saying is that it would cost more<\/i> than $6.7 billion to save that $6.7 billion. Really? Is\u2026is that job opening available? Because if it is, I think I could do it for half that cash. Or, at least I\u2019d like to try.<\/p>\n
See, this is a prime example of the problems of big government. It can waste billions \u2013 billions \u2013 and then claim that it\u2019s not cost effective to deal with the waste. And then the recipients of that fraud have nothing to worry about. Their scam is safe within the walls of a massive bureaucracy. Oh sure, it\u2019s helping the poor and elderly, but really, is there no way at all for that to happen without flushing away billions every year? Really?<\/p>\n
This is also a prime example of what happens to centralized government programs. They become bigger and costlier, and, as Ronald Reagan observed, they wind up being the closest thing to eternal life we\u2019ll see this side of heaven. They are a power unto themselves, and any attempt to rein them in has to deal with that inertia, not to mention that, as I said earlier, any attempt to curb such waste gets those attempting it the injustice of being considered hateful, racist, and whatever else the Left can come up with today.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a trend here on the issue of big government programs, both in the money they cost, and the way they\u2019re defended in spite of their results. And yet, we just keep adding to their numbers. If one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results, it\u2019s time to have the government committed.<\/p>\n
It has been a tenet of the Left that government can be a force for good, and no one\u2019s really denying that. It\u2019s just that there are places for it, and places where it shouldn\u2019t be, and if you overextend government\u2019s reach, prepare for these very consequences. The Constitution was written to keep those kinds of folks in check. Unfortunately, there\u2019s not been enough pushback, and now too many Americans expect this sort of overreach, but they want others to pay for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the alternatives to ObamaCare that the Left suggested is that Medicare should just be expanded to cover everyone. It \u201cworked\u201d, so they said, and thus that would be a simpler way to get health care coverage expanded. But an investigation by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15,18,275],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doug","category-economics-taxes","category-government","category-healthcare"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}