This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, July 10th, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

Why do proponents of universal coverage point to Medicare as a model?

Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, says it's based on a

misconception about what constitutes rationing of health care.

The left likes to argue that we can have universal coverage

without the sort of rationing that you see in Canada and Great Britain where patients

have to wait for care and they have to suffer while they're waiting.

Just look at the Medicare program here in the United States, they'll say.

You've got a program there that provides universal coverage to people

over age 65 and the disabled and you can see any doctor you want. Any doctor

will see will take Medicare patients and for the most part that's true.

What they don't tell you is the reason why Medicare is able to provide access to any doctor

you want to see.

It's because Medicare pays enough so that the doctors are happy to

see Medicare patients. That actually gets to be a problem. You know, Medicare pays so much and

for so many unnecessary services that the researchers at Dartmouth Medical School

have estimated that 30% of Medicare spending is just wasted.

It provides, it purchases medical care that provides no value and doesn't make the

patient any healthier or happier. So it's correct that Medicare doesn't ration

medical services. What it does end up doing though is because it spends so much

money on on useless services, that 30% comes to about a hundred billion dollars

per year. What it ends up doing is it ends up

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