Two weeks ago, Charles Blahous a Public Trustee of the Social Security and Medicare systems published a paper detailing the “double-counting” of supposed savings in Medicare.  Allegedly the “savings” reduce long-term costs. Of course, these savings will never be realized because they are simply arbitrary reductions of projected doctor and hospital payments, a solution Congress has never once allowed in the history of Medicare. Why not you ask?  Because reimbursement rates are already so stingy, that further cuts will make conversion of hospitals to hotels attractive and bell-hops will make more than doctors . . . some do now!

For his efforts to illuminate, he was smeared by the double diminutives, Ezra Klein, the supposed wunderkind at the fading Washington Post and Paul Krugman, the former Enron adviser who writes for the faster fading New York Times.

In today’s Wall Street Journal (Exposing the Medicare Double Count) Mr. Blahous teams with Jim Capretta to offer an explanation that even Ezra and Paul can understand.