File this under “thanks for nothing.” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt admits Medicare is heading toward an implosion, but admits it’s too late for the Bush Administration to do anything about it.

Via Reuters:

. . . the next administration will have to act to stop rising costs and get control of the $400 billion federal health insurance plan for the elderly, which now covers 44 million people.

“Higher and higher costs are being borne by fewer and fewer people. Sooner or later, this formula implodes,” Leavitt said in a speech to the right-leaning Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute think-tanks.

“There is serious danger here,” he added. “Medicare is drifting towards disaster.”

It’s no secret Medicare is on track to go broke around 2017. Leavitt went on to state the obvious–that the Bush Administration and the current Congress don’t have enough time left to address the problem. Helpfully, he went on to advise:

“So, given the strong possibility this won’t get fixed in the next 266 days, I would like to add some general advice on the creation of a political construct for action and a general strategy to solve the problem,” Leavitt said, saying he was speaking as a Medicare Trustee and not as a government official. Leavitt said paying for each medical action separately is wasteful and “it often results in bad referral decisions, sloppy hand-offs, duplications, fraud, and poor quality of care. The result is inappropriate care and unnecessary cost.”

Just one question: did he really deliver this with a straight face?

National Public Radio added to the noise level by doing a follow-up interview with Leavitt. NPR posed the question–is Medicare  creating intergenerational friction? But they concluded that it probably isn’t. Amazing that you can get so much attention for pontificating about something you’ve done nothing to fix.

Tags | Medicare, public policy