I just wrote NRO's Bruce Bartlett on the subject of Medicare costs. He has an article on the budget up:
Right now the taxpayer is on the hook to treat elderly heart disease via medicare much as it has been for decades. Up until this administration the only thing we paid for was surgery, by far the more expensive of the treatments. Now that we have a drug benefit, we can encourage medical management which is both better from a patient perspective and is less expensive. But classic medicare and the medicare drug benefit are two different budget items. How is it we can be spending massive new monies on medical treatment without having a lowering of expenses for surgical treatment?Posted by TMLutas at February 9, 2004 02:43 PMI smell a Washington accounting mess. Would you address this?