The (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union’s 3-7-06 front-page report of the (allegedly) pilfering podiatrist underscores a far graver issue than one physician’s plunge into the darkness of Medicare/Medicaid fraud:  these government-run insurance systems are inefficient, bloated, and notoriously subject to rampant, potentially-lethal doses of the sort of abuse and theft described in the piece.  And for every doctor who so games the systems, there are dozens or hundreds more who suffer business harm from late payment, mis-payment, and no-payment promulgated by the reams of red tape at which bureaucracy is so adept; driving overall health care costs up and turning entitled sick folks away from doctors who’ve lost their patience (sorry) with these programs. The Times-Unions’ sources estimated Florida Medicaid fraud rates at 40%, or $6,4000,000,000 lost to theft in one state only, for one year only, and before considering fraud against other states’ Medicaid and the Federally-administered Medicare program. Clearly the potential abuse tallies in at a good fraction of a trillion dollars, per year, and can be expected to skyrocket along with the programs’ budgets as the population continues to gray. Troubling in any time, this situation holds the seeds of great disaster in an era where cost overruns for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are widely predicted to bring the US economy to its knees the near years to come, as the massive baby boom begins to take its retirement. Successful private enterprises have many undesirable attributes, but massive bloat and shameful waste are rarely counted among them, almost by definition. If our leaders have the will and vision to transfer the burden of these enormous government-operated insurance companies to those that care to control excess and turn a profit, perhaps the worst can be avoided.