The Assault on Medicare Advantage Plans is Already Underway
About 660,000 people nationwide — or 7 percent of Medicare Advantage enrollees — are in plans that are set to close… Medicare Advantage enrollees who do nothing and remain in the same plan in 2010 will see their monthly premiums increase an average of 32 percent… Medicare Advantage plans are shifting more costs on to patients because the government will pay them about 4.5 percent less per enrollee in 2010 than it did this year
Full article in The Dallas Morning News.
So much for the promise made during the campaign… “if you like what you have, you can keep it.”
The government’s attack on Medicare Advantage plans is short-sighted. In a very narrow sense, Medicare Advantage plans cost more than if their beneficiaries were in the traditional Medicare monopoly – $12 billion a year. However, because they negotiate contracts with providers they actually help relieve a bigger cost: the cost-shift or “hidden tax” that Medicare imposes on the privately insured by underpaying providers. This is about $49 billion: four times greater than the “extra” costs of Medicare Advantage (http://tinyurl.com/ydp6r3h).
What makes this so amazing is that the typical member of a Medicare Advantage program has the profile of a Democratic Party voter. They tend to be disproportionately below average income and disproportionately minority.
So think about what is happening. The Democrats in Congress rail against the insurance companies and insurance company profits and then what do they do about it?
They screw the beneficiaries, who happen to be their own voters!
Question: What has Congress got against the elderly?
It’s not the Medicare Advantage plans that are being assaulted. It’s senior citizens who are under attack.
When are the seniors going to wake up and realize they have been sold out by AARP?
Seniors of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.