To: Road Walker who wrote (1855 ) 8/20/2007 11:13:23 AM From: TimF Respond to Medicare used to spend a lot less, but it used to pay for a much smaller number of people. If you figuring efficiency you have to account for that fact. If you don't give it 12% of the debt it still has to get some of that, perhaps calculated as if Medicare has always served as many people as it does now (but you would still adjust down for less spending per person), or perhaps you adjust for both less people and less spending per patient, but make a separate adjustment for the fact that the program was smaller, and is taking a larger and larger part of new federal debt. re: * Medicare pays health care claims for seniors which tend to cost a lot more than the average claim cost for a younger person thereby distorting any comparison between under-age-65 costs and those over age-65. For example, Humana reported its first quarter 2007 medical cost ratio to be 89.3% for its senior business. That is a lot closer to the Medicare expense ratio than I would expect most favoring a single-payer system would think. forbes.com
