On Wednesday, the Drudge Report linked to a story at our digital magazine, the Heartlander, by Benjamin Domenech on how the Medicare system has spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars on penis pumps in the last decade.
(NOTE: The traffic was so … well … inflated from normal, that it crashed our servers for a while. For that we are grateful, but also apologize. We’ve taken the necessary steps to ensure that doesn’t happen next time.)
The story got picked up by talk radio hosts across the country, including Sean Hannity, and spread all across the Web. One of the many blogs that linked over to that story was National Review Online’s The Corner. NRO’s Andrew Stiles, like most, had some fun with the story, titling his blog post “Federal ‘Stimulus’.” (Hee, hee. The jokes are, indeed, nearly endless.)
But the core of the story is a worthy examination of government spending priorities, especially with entitlements such as Medicare. And spending nearly $250 million of Medicare funds on penis pumps over a decade is as good an example as you can find of mission enlargement. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist. Let’s go with “mission creep” … though that has some trouble, too.)
Anyway, I read a thoughtful comment beneath that Corner post by CharlesWayne defending the spending, and I thought it warranted a thoughtful response. Here’s what he wrote:
What’s the problem? Medicare isn’t some government handout — it’s a health insurance system FORCED upon our elderly, for which they had to pay quite a bit of money over a LONG period of time (up to $4000 a year for up to 45 years — yes I know that doesn’t count inflation).
Erectile disfunction IS a medical problem, and old men do deserve to get sexual satisfaction. Why shouldn’t their paid-for health insurance cover this medical problem?
This is what is fundamentally wrong with a one-size-fits-all government run program. Because “government” is providing Medicare, every taxpayer feels they should have a say in what the coverage is. If we had private insurance, the insurance companies could compete on price by covering different things, and people could decide what kind of insurance they wanted, and how much they were willing to pay for it.
But you can’t do that with medicare, so instead we all fight over what medicare will cover, and none of us gets a choice in what our health insurance will cover except by fighting over it legislatively.
Hmmm. OK. If only we had a truly private market for health care payment/insurance, one unmolested by government meddling. Well, I get to that in more detail my response — as well as the idea that penis pumps are a legitimate public health care expense:
Charles: If the government is collecting money from some people and handing it to others, it is by definition a “government hand-out.” The Medicare trust fund is as mythical as the Loch Ness Monster … and the Social Security trust fund. Besides, current Medicare recipients get two to six times more in benefits than they paid into the system.
Paying for bozack pumps for septuagenarians is only a vivid (but still valid) example of … well … how the Medicare system has been perverted. C’mon. That’s not real “health care.” That’s a lifestyle perk the old folks a generation ago would have been reluctant to spend their own money on. Instead, in the modern American welfare state, the taxpayers are subsidizing it (plus, certainly, the little blue pills.)
Medicare was enacted as a safety net for seniors so they could get treatment for conditions that actually made them sick. It has now grown into providing, at public expense, whatever treatment or medical device they desire. And Congress is loath to ever say “no” to anything — even something as absurd as weiner pumps — lest they become victim to political rhetoric and ads that paint them as “cutting” Medicare benefits to grandma and grandpa.
But, your larger point is right on. The “one-size-fits-all” mentality of Medicare (and Obamacare, for that matter) is bad, but only part of the problem. The bad influence of government policy destroying sensible market forces on health care goes back to World War II when price controls led companies to offer health coverage in lieu of salary to keep and attract talent. That started the long and insidious journey of getting the dollar paid by the consumer farther and farther away from the doctor — to the point that even “private” insurance is sopped with layer upon layer of wasteful and expensive bureaucracy.
Here’s the chart for the linked citation above from the American Enterprise Institute:
Now, let’s bring this post full-circle. Let’s illustrate the absurdity of our Medicare dollars paying big money to make everyone Larry King with this classic clip from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery:
