ABC's "Good Morning America" exposed many problems with Medicare's hotline number 1-800-MEDICARE September 11, including telephone operators "who couldn't answer the [questions]," "gave out the wrong information" or were completely unreachable.
The onscreen caption for the ABC report read "Investigation Exposes Health Care Mess." The morning broadcast didn't disappoint, pointing to a Senate committee investigation that had staffers call the Medicare hotline more than 500 times.
Co-host Chris Cuomo teased to introduce Yunji de Nies' report:
Many seniors looking for answers to their questions often turn to help lines that can be anything but helpful.
Even though "Good Morning America" seems to have taken a recent interest in the glaring problems at the government-backed program, experts have been making the point for years.
J.D. Foster, Ph.D., the Norman B. Ture Senior Fellow in the Economics of Fiscal Policy at The Heritage Foundation, encouraged readers September 2 to look at Medicare as if it were a business saying, "taking a step back to view Medicare as a health insurance company simplifies the essentials of the matter."
Being a healthcare provider is already difficult when your client base is made up of mostly seniors. But for Medicare the difficulties are even worse because it is a government agency and needs to operate in the midst of "repeated changes in executive management, cumbersome government procurement and management rules and the vagaries of congressional oversight."
In 2005, The Heritage Foundation listed Medicare funding as one of their top 10 examples of government waste.
—Paul Detrick is a research analyst at the Business & Media Institute.




















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Try Social Security Disability Insurance...
September 11, 2008 - 15:44 ET by anneftx... automatic denial after automatic denial. Finally hired a lawyer, made some progress, but now seem to once again be mired in quicksand. So far Medicare hasn't kicked in and regular SS retirement benefits were automatic. I'd love to see a deep investigative report on SSDI.
anneftx
yep.. and try the IRS
September 11, 2008 - 15:54 ET by Gary HallFrom MSM Money Mag, on-line (Sometimes one can even appreciate Ralph Nader's efforts):
This is bad...we need more
September 11, 2008 - 16:07 ET by acumenIf ABC understands that Government healthcare is a mess, then why does ABC continue to parade Dr. Tim Johnson out in front of the cameras to declare there a risk in putting individuals in control of their own health care while championing more government control of healthcare?
And this,
September 12, 2008 - 08:34 ET by tomnkikiis what Barack H. Obama wants us to use as our "nationalized healthcare"(better known as Socialized Medicine). Medicare for all! What a disaster!