In regards to the possible 2% cuts to Medicare, “The Wall Street Journal” recently printed an editorial in which one healthcare expert said that “congress would decree that U.S. medicine must provide the same level of patient care services, but do so for 98 cents on the current government dollar; that dollar is already below actual costs.

Furthermore, “for the same hospital services, private insurers on average pay $1.49 today, according to Medicare data on relative public and commercial rates. A doctor to whom Medicare pays $1 would receive $1.25 from a private carrier for delivering the same care. The rest of the economy does not work like this.

“The fiscal distortions of such central planning are even worse. All politicians—but these days especially Democrats—like to pretend they’ll pay providers somewhat less in the future, despite knowing that is unlikely to happen in practice,” said an unnamed healthcare expert. “Medicare’s prospective payments are low enough that further reductions may jeopardize access to care and in many cases threaten the viability of hospitals and those delivering physician services.

“So the main effect of these “cuts” is merely to move future spending off the federal balance sheet.”