This article will discuss the basics of Part A of the Medicare program.
The Medicare program is one of the most important PPPs (Public-private partnerships) because it controls health care for older people. It is a joint program of the US government and private health insurance companies, which is why it’s named Medicare. It will manage health care costs for the long-term elderly.
PPP stands for Public-private partnerships, and that's what most people would call it when talking about insurance – some also refer to it as PDP (private delivery of public services) or just PP. Since it was established, it has been a policy-making tool for the US, but it has a very limited role in European countries. A few years ago, several European countries started to evaluate the possibility of implementing Medicare PPPs. However, in most the – Belgium and Finland are the exceptions – PPPs are not yet on the table. The US government is also interested in establishing single-payer health care systems in most countries, although it has not been able to attract much support. The debate on PPPs is one of the oldest ones in public economics; already, at that time, many economists argued about the negative effects of PPPs and tried to show that they would lead to large budget deficits. To counter these arguments, they pointed out the advantages that PPPs have, such as the fact that they are cost-efficient.
The advantages mentioned above in the context of healthcare seem to be a core argument for many people. For example, the United Kingdom's best-known economist Churchill Aitkin stated that "a public hospital is like a machine with which one can make money ."Finally, critics have argued that they are not sustainable. The problems of unsustainable systems like PPPs tend to be large budget deficits and low capital formation. As a result, countries typically end up with massive national debt levels and high-interest rates, which bring the government into conflict with its creditors. This is why many countries have a dual system of health care financing, a form of PPP. For example, some countries like France and the Netherlands have a dual health care financing system.
