Auction expert and noted critic of CMS’s competitive bidding program Peter Cramton, Ph.D., Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, has released a new online video aimed at educating taxpayers on the bid program’s problems, and urging them to help the industry reform the program.
The 12-minute video, “Is Medicare Heading for a Train Wreck?,” outlines the various problems with the program and describes possible fixes. It can be viewed at http://vimeo.com/26486255, or here:
“Controlling Medicare costs is essential to our health care system,” Prof. Cramton says. “Yet as we look to the future, unfunded Medicare expenses are estimated to be about 70 trillion dollars—an unsustainable amount. Effective use of market methods in Medicare is our best hope for controlling these costs while maintaining quality. Unfortunately, the current Medicare auction program is fatally flawed.”
Cramton makes the case that the current program is not designed to succeed and that if CMS wants to use market-based methods to control costs it must use modern bidding methods (which it does not). The video notes that in the nine months after CMS received a letter from 167 experts, including Cramton, regarding the program’s flaws, the agency has done nothing to fix those flaws.
At the video’s close, Cramton urges taxpayers to learn more about the bid program and to help push for its reform.