Company Behind Joe Namath Medicare Advantage Ads Has Long Rap Sheet of Misconduct

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/health/2024-02-22-company-joe-namath-medicare-advantage-ads-misconduct/

Thousands of ads for Medicare Advantage plans featuring former football star Joe Namath aired during the 2023 open enrollment period.

Former New York Jets superstar Joe Namath can be seen every year during Medicare open enrollment hocking plans that tell seniors how great their life would be if only they signed up for a Medicare Advantage plan. From October 15 to December 7 last year alone, Joe Namath ads ran 3,670 times, according to iSpot, which tracks TV advertising. But the company behind those ads, now called Blue Lantern Health, and their products, HealthInsurance.com and the Medicare Coverage Helpline, have an expansive rap sheet of misconduct, including prosecutions by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, and a recent bankruptcy filing that critics say is designed to jettison the substantial legal liabilities the firm has incurred. In September 2023, the company became Blue Lantern; before that, it was called Benefytt; and before that, Health Insurance Innovations. Forty-three state attorneys general had settled with the company in 2018, with it paying a $3.4 million fine. A close associate of the company, Steven Dorfman, has also been prosecuted by the FTC, in addition to the Department of Justice.



Namath himself has a bit of a checkered past when it comes to his business associates—in the early 1970s, he co-owned a bar frequented by members of the Colombo and Lucchese crime families, according to reporting at the time cited in a 2004 biography. Due to the controversy surrounding the bar, Namath was forced by the NFL Commissioner to sell his interest in it. Last year, it was revealed that Namath had employed a prolific pedophile coach at his football camp, also in the 1970s, and the 80-year-old ex-quarterback is now being sued by one of the coach’s victims.

The Namath ads are the main illustration of the behemoth Medicare Advantage marketing industry, which is designed to herd seniors into Medicare Advantage plans that restrict the doctors and hospitals that seniors can go to and the procedures they can access through the onerous “prior authorization” process, and it costs the federal government as much as $140 billion annually compared to traditional Medicare. Over half of seniors—nearly 31 million people—are now in Medicare Advantage, and there is little understanding of the drawbacks of the program. Seniors are aware that they may receive modest gym or food benefits but typically do not realize that they may be giving up their doctors, their specialists, their outpatient clinics, and their hospitals in favor of an in-network alternative that may be lower quality and farther away.

How So Many Seniors Are Lured Into Medicare Advantage

Blue Lantern—with its powerful private equity owner Madison Dearborn—may be the key to understanding how so many people have been ushered into Medicare Advantage—and the pitfalls that private equity’s rapid entrance into health care can create for ordinary Americans. While Blue Lantern is just one company, it is a Rosetta Stone for everything that is wrong with American health care today—fraud, profiteering, lawbreaking, no regard for patient care—where only the public comes out the loser. Blue Lantern uses TV ads and, at least until regulators began poking around, a widespread telemarketing operation, being one of the main firms charged with generating “leads” that are then sold to brokers and insurers, as Medicare Advantage plans are banned from cold-calling. Court filings reviewed by HEALTH CARE Un-Covered allege that after legal discovery, Blue Lantern (then known as Benefytt) at minimum dialed seniors over 17 million times, potentially in violation of federal law that requires telemarketers to properly identify themselves and who they are working for—ultimately, in this case, insurers that generate huge profits from Medicare Advantage.

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[Vinca]

1. I know their ads have driven me nuts for years. I rarely wish death on anyone, but

if I never saw Joe Namath's face again it would be a good thing.

[doc03]

2. The sign-up period has passed but it doesn't seem like there

are fewer ads. I retired in 2010 and regret the union pushed us into Medicare Advantage. At
the time I had no idea what a mess Medicare Advantage was. I can't get the thought out of
my mind our leaders got some money for it.

[PSPS]

3. "our leaders got some money for it"

Here's the way it works:

Republicans enact legislation in a way that over-complicates things so that consumers are confused and fall prey to these misleading ads. Of course, the loopholes and complicated nature of the legislation are designed to allow nefarious companies like these medicare advantage outfits to swoop in and trick people into signing up. After that, the money pours in and the companies dutifully launder a portion of their lucre back to their republican enablers as "campaign contributions," thus insuring that this bad legislation endures, fending off any attempt to correct it.

This is the off-the-shelf GOP money laundering setup. Pass bad legislation designed to divert taxpayer money to "large money donors" who give you a cut of the take as an outright bribe or a "campaign contribution."

By the way, I see Namath is now hawking hearing aids.

[leftstreet]

4. DURec