Straight Up Fraud': Data Confirms Private Insurers Use Medicare Advantage to Steal Billions
Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), which has has no connection with Kaiser Permanente, wrote on social media that "the move to privatize Medicare" has "been very profitable, in part because insurers are good at making their patients seem sicker."
Journalist Natalie Shure concurred, tweeting: "Privatized Medicare plans cherry pick healthier enrollees, fudge medical records to make them look as sick as possible, coax doctors into tacking on extra sham diagnoses to bill for, and pay themselves a profit on top of it. Medicare Advantage shouldn't exist."
"For all its faults, Medicare is a (nearly) universal program for 65+, with overhead hovering around 2%—far lower than its private counterparts," Shure added. "What inefficiencies did anyone think MA would be solving exactly[?]" she asked.
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Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, a left-wing think tank, argued that the notion that private insurers would "provide more benefit for less money" than traditional Medicare "while taking a profit" is insane on its face.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/10/09/straight-fraud-data-confirms-private-insurers-use-medicare-advantage-steal-billions
We need universal healthcare like every other OECD country has, countries that all pay half per capita what we do, and get better results.
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looks like ALL of Medicare will be privatized by 2030. Then, good luck getting single-payer. Just as fossil fuel companies push to get infrastructure in place to compel the nation to continue using fossil fuels, insurers are pushing to get all of Medicare into DCEs in order to forestall any effort to expand traditional Medicare, i.e. gradually lower the age of enrollment in order to create universal single-payer in the U.S.
Biden continues to facilitate this.
"Medicare" "Advantage" was always a Trojan horse to get ignorant 'Muricans to voluntarily agree to privatization, even though the vast majority probably have no clue that's what they are doing.
https://justcareusa.org/dce-experiment-could-mean-total-privatization-of-medicare/]
Wall Street loves it. And the Trump administration, which promised to drain the swamp and stop Wall Street predations, instead turned Washington into a prosperous paradise for the worst Wall Street predators.
This move away from quality healthcare service to profit-oriented denials of care is worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year in taxpayer money flowing to private industry.
The CMS description of the program shows how much it is directed at Wall Street, not to the quality of care.
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Direct contracting is supposed to be a pilot program, yet Medicare has no plans to limit the number of people it enrolls in these new plans. Instead, Medicare has announced plans to enroll 100% of traditional Medicare members into DCE-like programs by 2030.
This massive handover appears to violate the limited authority that Congress granted to conduct an experiment. Without any Congressional oversight, CMS is moving all people on Medicare into these private business plans by the Orwellian redefining of its direct contracting authority with providers and suppliers.
The internet doesn't convey my sarcastic fake confusion very well.
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It is quite obvious but, I just like putting it out there from time to time just as a friendly reminder. Sort of like a PSA for the younger, less experienced crowd. 
All health insurance companies are nothing more than legal skim operations. But, you know, capitalism.
