Biden Sticks with Trump Scheme to Privatize Medicare

[douglas9]

Why is President Joe Biden stalling when he could immediately halt the controversial Medicare direct contracting program put in place by Donald Trump?

The Trump administration had the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, an offshoot of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, run a congressionally approved pilot program that essentially established a roadmap to privatize all of Medicare.

We ran a comprehensive story about this in January by Diane Archer, president of Just Carefully USA, an independent digital hub covering health and financial issues affecting Baby Boomers and their families.

Consider that nearly 50% of Medicare beneficiaries – 26 million seniors – are already enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans. In those cases, the federal government provides a fixed monthly fee for each beneficiary under the plan’s care to a middleman, regardless of what medical services they actually receive. That gives them private companies an incentive to spend less on patient care to drive up their profits.

So far, 53 companies have signed contracts to work as fiscal intermediaries between patients and their healthcare providers.

https://www.dcreport.org/2022/02/16/biden-sticks-with-trump-scheme-to-privatize-medicare/

[samplegirl]

1. I was not even aware

of this.

[Joinfortmill]

2. I don't know all the facts, but I've had an Advantage plan

for years. No issues or complaints but no major illnesses requiring extensive treatment either, a fact which could change at any time.

[douglas9]

6. Trump Plan to Privatize Medicare Is Alive and Well

Seniors and their loved ones may be alarmed to learn that there is an insidious, but largely unpublicized effort underway to gradually privatize Medicare. According to media reports, some traditional Medicare patients are now being placed in for-profit managed care plans without even knowing, thanks to a Trump administration policy that is still in effect. Under this pilot program, called “Direct Contracting,” private companies are supervising selected Medicare patients’ care, even though the beneficiaries signed up for traditional Medicare.



https://www.ncpssm.org/entitledtoknow/trump-plan-to-privatize-medicare-still-alive-and-well/

[Joinfortmill]

7. That sucks, Scammer Trump can't stop scamming. He even scams for the government.

[Rebl2]

10. My rheumatologist

warned me not to get an advantage plan because they won’t pay for the biologic drug I take. That was a couple of years ago, so don’t imagine it has changed.

[enough]

3. Why? Big Money.

Quote from the article:

So why hasn’t Biden killed the plan? He stopped aspects of it in March 2021 when there was great outcry over a component of the program which would have auto-enrolled beneficiaries in certain geographic locations into direct contracting. Maybe the right question is why the president installed Elizabeth Fowler in the top spot at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, given her history as a top executive at Johnson & Johnson and her practices serving under the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.

Fowler has said Trump’s Direct Contracting Entities program will stay in place for three years and then it will be reevaluated.

Fowler was one of the architects behind the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). She helped write one version of the act as an aide to former Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) that eliminated the public option, thereby boosting profits for the healthcare industry. Baucus banned single-payer advocates from the Obamacare deliberations leading to an insurance-dominated version.

Even more troubling, Fowler is said to have held closed-door meetings at the White House with Wall Street firms hoping to learn how the act would affect stock prices while serving as one of Obama’s advisers on healthcare policy.

She has a long history with Medicare policy, having served George W. Bush by helping to draft the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (Medicare Part D) – that blocked the ability of Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices and instead outsourced cost-control responsibility to the insurance companies.

More at link

[House of Roberts]

5. And people wonder why he tanks in poll after poll.

We know the opposition will lock-step disapprove of Biden categorically.
Each single issue voter on the left seems to have at least one problem that elicits a negative approval of Biden as well.

If we ever get the votes, Medicare Advantage needs to have to work for the same money as regular Medicare.

[Beastly Boy]

8. Probably because MMI is under contract with government and will sue

if the pilot program is halted. No benefit to Biden to cancel it, and there is no commitment by the government to adopt the program. But if it runs its course, there will be hard data to compare it to the way Medicare currently runs. The data may prove the effectiveness of the current Medicare administration or facilitate positive changes in it.

And, by stopping the pilot program, Biden would invite a barrage of criticism from the right that will be based on nothing but spin.

[House of Roberts]

9. MMI IS part of the government.

But let's not try to do ANYTHING that "would invite a barrage of criticism from the right that will be based on nothing but spin".

IOW, basically, let's not do anything, ever, because there will ALWAYS be a barrage from the right, after all.

[Beastly Boy]

12. Thanks. Note to self: research trumps speculation.

https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/center-medicare-and-medicaid-innovation

MMI is indeed part of the government. It is part of Obamacare and it predates Trump. So, this being the case, my best guess would have to do with the group of lawmakers who are calling for the end of the program sending their request to Bacera, not Biden. Whatever the case may be, a one month delay in Bacera's response hardly translates into Biden sticking with Trump scheme to privatize Medicare.

But I still object to your misrepresentation of my statement to mean "let's not do anything, ever, because there will ALWAYS be a barrage from the right". I neither said, nor meant anything of the sort. It's your words taking my words out of context, not my words in other words, And, if you take care to not spin what I said, elections were lost for reasons far less consequential than the one I suggested.

[twodogsbarking]

11. When I visit the doctor the two concerns seem to be

How quickly can they move me through.
What should they say is wrong so they can get paid without a problem.

[emulatorloo]

13. An op-ed from a website I never heard of? I'll be looking for credible sources, thanks n/t

[douglas9]

14. The "Medicare Advantage" Plan to Kill Real Medicare/Jayapal Leads 50+ Democrats in Urging Biden to E

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/01/05/jayapal-leads-50-democrats-urging-biden-end-trump-era-assault-medicare

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/11/19/2065219/-The-Medicare-Advantage-Plan-to-Kill-Real-Medicare

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/09/14/the-advantage-war-against-medicare/

https://www.dcreport.org/about/