Ted Kennedy's Statement On National Healthcare

Today's Washington Examiner posted an article by William Kristol on a letter from Ted Kennedy published in NEWSWEEK on the subject of healthcare.  Kennedy and his co-author, Bob Shrum discuss the idea of a government-supervised healthcare that will save us all money.  The article states:

"We also need to move from a system that rewards doctors for the sheer volume of tests and treatments they prescribe to one that rewards quality and positive outcomes. For example, in Medicare today, 18 percent of patients discharged from a hospital are readmitted within 30 days--at a cost of more than $15 billion in 2005. Most of these readmissions are unnecessary, but we don't reward hospitals and doctors for preventing them. By changing that, we'll save billions of dollars while improving the quality of care for patients."

This is an interesting concept.  Readmission of patients in hospitals is a problem for Senator Kennedy--ok, let's think about that for a minute.  Many medicare patients are elderly.  They may have recurring problems toward the end of their lives that will put them in the hospital frequently.  We do not have the knowledge to solve all end-of-life medical problems.  This is another example of the government saying it can (and will) do something to cut medical spending when it has no control over the events that are causing the spending (unless you begin to deny admission to the hospital to these people).

This is one of many questions and problems with the idea of government-run healthcare.