Another way to control health costs

With all the concern being expressed about a potential financial crisis for Medicare in just a couple of decades, it seems the agency has found a way to hold down costs: Just keep people from getting the correct information. That way, they'll never be able to collect any benefits. The St. Petersburg (FL) Times for Monday has the tale.

Nearly 4 in 10 calls to the 1-800-MEDICARE help line were answered incorrectly or incompletely, or got no answer at all, according to a recent audit by the Government Accountability Office. Twenty-nine percent of calls were answered inaccurately, and another 10 percent were disconnected or forwarded to an office that was closed. It is an appalling error rate for an agency that older Americans rely on when making health care decisions.

Indeed. It turns out that the people who answer the phone use computerized scripts to answer questions - but little attempt was made to see if they understood the scripts they were using. And the "test" they had to pass before starting work consisted of being able to pick the right script two consecutive times out of six tries.

Just more government bureaucratic inefficiency, yes? Well, no, not quite. While Medicare oversees the program, the actual work was farmed out to a private company. So what you're actually seeing here is the magic of the marketplace.