Video: Medicare’s chief actuary explains why system has no future

Meet Richard Foster, Medicare’s chief actuary and now chief skeptic. Greg Hengler captures a key part of Foster’s speech to the American Enterprise Institute, a dry affair that will probably only delight the wonks in the room, but it’s still a must-see.  Foster captures the heart of the ridiculous assumptions that drive the CMS analysis of Medicare’s health and explains why, failing a major transformation of the entire health-care industry, Medicare is doomed to collapse:

With the reimbursement reductions that funded ObamaCare, the Obama administration will have done the impossible — they will have made Medicare even less attractive to providers than Medicaid.  Simply put, the system will have so few providers at the rates imposed for reimbursement that the system will simply shut itself down.  Rescinding the rate cuts will keep providers within the system, but only for a while, as private insurance reimbursement rates will still outstrip them by ever-increasing amounts and discourage providers from seeing Medicare patients.  But rescinding the rate cuts means much higher costs than CMS projected in its latest analysis and puts the entire system into collapse from another direction.

The only way to make Medicare healthy is to tighten eligibility requirements and to reduce inefficiencies within the system.  One cannot rescue an entitlement by expanding it, which is exactly what ObamaCare proposes to do.

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