Fixing Medicare

When ideas of healthcare reform began the question being asked was: Should we fix Medicare? With debates about the federal deficit swirling, the question has now become: How should we fix Medicare? The shift in positions and increase in urgency has come from the acknowledgement that Medicare is broken, and its costing the U.S. a ton of money.

It's easy to say we should fix Medicare; Actually figuring out how is a tad more difficult. As outlined in this New York Times article, President Obama's deficit reduction committee has considered a number of options. These options include (but are not limited to) :

1) Increasing the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67
2) Requiring beneficiaries to pay higher premiums
3) Charging Co-payments for home health services
4) Paying doctors in "lump" amounts for entire treatments as opposed to paying for each step (tests, procedures) individually

The list goes on. For the complete range of options, check out the article. It's hard to say which option is best because all have pros and cons. For example, raising the eligibility age would save the government money for those two years, but those 65 and 66 year old patients might now be eligible for Medicaid. This just displaces the cost from Medicare to Medicaid.

Whichever solution is chosen, it will have to be supplemented with one thing: more efficient care. Changing the structure of Medicare will do nothing if health care is still administered in an inefficient way. This means, reducing medical errors, hospital infections, and administrative costs. More efficient care means cheaper care in the long run.

Fixing Medicare will probably require a pretty creative solution. What do you think is the best way to tackle this problem? Do you agree that any change needs to be supplemented with better health care? Will raising premiums do anything?