Jacob Hacker on Medicare, Interest Groups and Politics
August 5, 2015
Jacob Hacker’s new piece in Generations, the Journal of the American Society on Aging, “Out of Balance: Medicare, Interest Groups, and American Politics,” looks at how interest group politics borne from Medicare’s early days, such as the AMA’s hostility to it, to the current tide of lobbyists– pharmaceutical companies, private insurers, medical device makers – abetted by the revolving door between Congress and K Street, and the shift in senior voters’ allegiances.
“As medical lobbyists beefed up, Medicare spent more and more, but it administered less and less,” Hacker writes.