Medicare Bureaucrats Can’t Dispense Factual Information On Their Own Program
Just another boondoggle for government-run health care via a report from InsideHealthPolicy.com sent to me by a Senate staffer friend in DC:
Senate aging committee ranking Republican Gordon Smith (OR) took CMS Acting Administrator Kerry Weems to task on the 1-800 MEDICARE call-in system at a Nov.15 hearing, charging that his staff received incorrect and misleading answers to several basic questions.
Smith, who also sits on the powerful Finance Committee, said his staffers made a series of calls to the 1-800-Medicare line and were repeatedly given false information after asking the operators several questions that should have had “scripted” answers.
“I think you need some quality control,” Smith said. Weems said he would look into the problems. CMS did not respond to a query on what has been done since the hearing.
My friend adds:
It’s not that they’re not trying their best or that they’re underfunded, it’s just that this program is nearly impossible to implement. The idea of a hotline where any [Medicare] eligible person can call in and get information about program choices and enrollment is absolutely ridiculous
If Medicare is a program that is so large, so complex and so confusing that not even bureaucrats who actually work for Medicare can dispense accurate information about it, doesn’t that tell us something?
Like maybe Medicare is a hopelessly inefficient program? That government-run health care doesn’t work?
That’s the conclusions I draw.
