Making Sure Private Medicare Insurance Companies Make More Money

Making Sure Private Medicare Insurance Companies Make More Money

By Passing those Extra Costs to Everybody Else

Wherever special interests are able to insert their greedy little paws into federal programs, you can be sure of one thing: the special interests will make more money, and that cost will be covered by the rest of us. Nothing brings that home like the entire American healthcare system, the most expensive per capita healthcare system on earth, in which every single developed nation in the world has significantly lower healthcare costs than ours… from hospital and doctor care, all forms of medical treatment, to the cost of prescription drugs and often the cost of hearing, dental and vision care.

All a special interest seems to have to say is “creeping socialism” and knee-jerk members of Congress bow to the healthcare insurance carriers’ fondest wishes. Forget that “social programs” (like public schools and universal healthcare) are embedded in every other major capitalist country in the world, the use of the root word “social” does not always mean “socialist.” Think about that when you see a Mercedes or Porsche driving down the street. Those cars were not built by socialists for socialists!!! And the German universal healthcare system is among the best on earth. Naturally, very efficient and cost effective. Unless you have money or a “Cadillac” healthcare provider, the fact that the United States has the best healthcare on earth is little more than a myth. We have the ability to provide that level of coverage but absolutely no intention of doing so except for the top of the top.

There was a wonderful plan to expand Medicare – calling it “Medicare Advantage” – while making that senior care program more efficient and cost effective. That was, of course, before insurance companies and administrators got into the mix. Writing for the May 12th Los Angeles Times, Don Lee explains why guaranteeing middleman profits, so deeply embedded in the American legislative process (gotta protect those campaign contributors) that no alternative is ever seriously considered, defeats our stated goal of reducing medical costs everywhere (how about “anywhere”?): “The U.S. spends far more on each member of that program than on those in the original senior medical plan… Medicare Advantage was sold as a cost-cutting move but is instead enriching health insurers…

“Medicare Advantage, which funnels government healthcare benefits through privately run managed-care insurers, has grown so fast that within months it’s expected to be the dominant form of coverage for seniors… That’s largely because the plans, most of them HMOs, offer lower out-of-pocket costs, plus added benefits not covered by original Medicare, such as dental and vision care and prescription drugs. Some Advantage plans even throw in gym memberships.

“The one thing that Medicare Advantage has not done is curb the government’s healthcare spending, even though that was a big selling point in Washington when it was approved in the mid-1990s as Medicare Part C… Today Medicare spends considerably more for an Advantage member than it does for a comparable enrollee in original Medicare Parts A and B… As a result, a program born out of a desire to deliver better care and more choices for seniors while reducing government costs is instead generating hefty income for private health insurers and keeping Medicare on a path to insolvency by decade’s end…

“Federal expenditures for Medicare in all forms are likely to reach $1 trillion this year, second only to Social Security as Washington’s most costly element in the so-called safety net… But Medicare and Social Security are politically so explosive that almost no one in Washington is willing to talk about the issues publicly, let alone propose spending cuts that will draw the ire of millions of older voters. Biden has promised to keep both programs off-limits to Republicans seeking to slash government spending as part of the debt ceiling talks…

“There are also health spending pressures that neither side can do much about. The number of seniors is growing as the U.S. population ages. They are living longer and seeking more expensive medical care to help them lead better and more productive lives… Against that challenging backdrop, the shift to Medicare Advantage represents a profound change with far-reaching consequences. It already counts as members nearly half of all 65 million people who are 65 and older and eligible for Medicare. More than 3.3 million Californians have Medicare Advantage.

“‘Today Medicare looks more like a marketplace of private plans than a national public health program,” said Tricia Neuman, Medicare policy expert at KFF, the San Francisco nonprofit healthcare research organization. She said it’s not clear whether Medicare Advantage is delivering better long-term health outcomes.” As you look at the debt ceiling talks, much is about reducing “entitlements.” Huh? When programs for seniors were established in the 1930s, the ratio of younger workers to elder retirees created an obvious funding structure. With elders filling an increasing percentage of our total population, that funding structure no longer works. Declining birth rates in most developed countries poses the same problem.

So, we can cut corporate taxes from 35% to 21%, adding trillions of dollars to our federal deficit, but as long as we don’t call those cuts “entitlements” or “creeping corporate socialism,” Congress does not even look at restoring even some of those taxes on the richest in the land – a nation where one-percenters own more than half of all of America’s wealth. It’s a GOP non-starter, even though the real reason we have such a remarkable federal deficit – over $31 trillion – is that we refuse to tax the wealthiest at the same rates that are used in the rest of the world.

That universal healthcare initiative, which would solve our Medicare funding issue and make sure that every American has the same healthcare benefits of every citizen of every other developed country, is perpetually denied. After all, with most of us bearing the annualized interest load on that deficit to ensure the rich can get richer, any other choice would simply cater to “creeping socialism.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and you wonder why very wealthy Americans support a party that has embraced conspiracy theories just to keep getting elected.