Medicare should stop paying private health plans participating in Medicare about 13 percent more than the same services cost in traditional Medicare programs.

The government, backed by a privatization obsession in Congress in 2003, boosted subsidies for private plans to get some to rejoin the system after they dropped out. The idea was that these plans would find more ingenious and efficient ways to provide health care than stodgy government. But the subsidies then fueled big increases in those inefficient (though sometimes friendlier) fee-for-service plans.

Private doesn’t always mean more efficient, whatever the magical thinking. Just consider Medicare, with its 2.5 percent overhead, and health insurers, with their 25 percent.