The American Spectator

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Government Efficiency at Work

By Philip Klein on 7.2.09 @ 9:39AM

The WSJ editorial page uses news of recent busts of a Medicare fraud ring to make an important point:

One of the purported benefits of nationalized health care is that it will be more efficient than private insurers since it would lack the profit motive and have lower administrative expenses, like Medicare. But one reason entitlement programs are so easy to defraud is precisely because they don't have those overhead costs -- they automatically pay whatever bills roll in with valid claims numbers.

In fact, an estimated $60 billion, or 7.5 percent, of the $800 billion spent on Medicare each year is lost in fraud.