I am sure you have heard the argument from Obama supporters that Government run health care would be beneficial to the American people. The claim is that it would be run similar to Medicare which has a much lower overhead than private health insurance, a sign that it is more efficiently run. While it is true that the overhead is much lower for the government run program, the claims of efficiency are exxagerated at best, unless you are referring to how efficiently fraudsters are allowed to collect money.

A draft report by the inspector general of Health and Human Services — circulating on Capitol Hill and leaked this week — determines that Medicare may have paid $2.8 billion in improper or fake claims for medical equipment in 2006. That’s an error rate of 31.5%, in a single corner of this colossal entitlement. “This report doesn’t surprise me,” fumed Democrat Pete Stark.

We’re speechless. Mr. Stark and his ilk consistently claim that Medicare is a model for government-run “universal” health care because it spends less on overhead than the private sector. True, Medicare’s administrative costs are just 3% of total spending, while the private sector hits 11% to 14%.

But insurance companies spend money to screen their claims for fraud. Medicare automatically pays more than 95% of the bills it receives. This lack of scrutiny reduces overhead, but it makes the program highly vulnerable to abuse. In June, a high-school dropout pleaded guilty to conning Medicare out of $105 million by submitting over 140,000 bogus claims before auditors noticed. It was the biggest health-care fraud in American history.

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Barack Obama, Features, Health Care, Politics