Re: “Reform system, not elderly,” Tuesday’s editorial

Tuesday’s editorial painted an inaccurate picture of a plan I offered with Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., to strengthen and fix Medicare.

As a physician, I understand the importance of ensuring quality care for seniors and those who are most vulnerable in our society. Yet, the fact is Medicare is unsustainable.

Today, the average senior gets $360,000 out of Medicare while only putting in $110,000. As Lieberman says, “We can’t save Medicare as we know it. We can only save Medicare if we change it.”

Medicare as it is structured today won’t exist in five years. We simply will not be able to even borrow the money to pay promised benefits. The Medicare Actuary says the Medicare program could be insolvent as soon as 2016. We have to act now to save Medicare. Every year we wait makes the inevitable task of structural reform more difficult.

You are right to note that Medicare fraud is a major problem, which the Lieberman-Coburn plan addresses. Nearly $100 billion is lost to Medicare and Medicaid waste, fraud and abuse each year. Each dollar lost to fraud or waste is a dollar not available to seniors.

Finally, the only way to truly reform health care is reconnect doctors and patients, and reconnect the purchase of health care with the purchaser. Today, third-parties — government and health care bureaucrats — have severed the doctor-patient relationship and undermined the very market forces that can make health care affordable and accessible.

I would encourage your readers to also look over the Patients’ Choice Act, I offered last year with House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. Our plan uses a consumer-directed approach, rather than a government or insurance company-directed approach, to reform health care.

Doing nothing to reform Medicare and health care is the surest way to harm seniors, today’s college students and future generations to follow.

Tom Coburn, U.S. senator