They Got The Wrong Number
I just received a robo-call from some group that wanted me to call my Congresscritter to stop the dismantling of Medicare Advantage.
Part C, Medicare Advantage, is the publicly financed, privately run HMO system that was set up by the same defective thinking that encouraged the original push for HMOs. No matter how often you point out that HMOs don’t actually do a better job of providing health care, are in fact a PITA to belong to, and end up being more expensive that the traditional system, they keep being supported by Congresscritters.
One of the areas I do want to see changed about Medicare is the elimination of Part C, Medicare Advantage plans. They cost a lot more money than traditional Medicare, and have much higher administrative costs with no proven advantage to patients. They are another way of funneling tax dollars to private corporations.
I would also like to see Part D, the drug benefit, folded into Tricare, with Tricare pricing, i.e. $3 for a generic prescription, and $9 for a name brand.
The phone call gives me hope that someone is actually looking at the numbers and intends to do something about them.
2 comments
One of the Senate bills calls for closing the Part D “donut hole” by ceasing to give Medicare Advantage 20% more than Medicare Classic providers. This undoubtedly is what has gotten the Medicare Advantage people alarmed, they’d have to start being efficient rather than being able to gorge on that 20% bonus they’re getting over “normal” Medicare. Not that this affects most Medicare recipients. Only 17% of Medicare recipients are part of Medicare Advantage, mostly because their own doctor probably isn’t part of a Medicare Advantage HMO plan and they aren’t going to switch.
The only HMO model that works is the Mayo Clinic/Kaiser Permanente model, where doctors are salaried employees and the employer is set up as a not-for-profit corporation and you have to go to one of their hospitals or clinics for care. Once you throw profit into the equation, or try to open it up to J. Random Doctor somewhere not under direct control of the HMO, the advantages in cost of the K-P model or of quality with the Mayo Clinic model goes away. Unfortunately that includes everybody who has an “HMO” today other than K-P or Mayo Clinic… the K-P / Mayo model simply has not scaled to outside of their own very special environments, and everybody else has screwed it up trying to re-implement it but with profit involved. When it comes to healthcare, profit screws up everything. Sigh!
– Badtux the Medical Penguin
.-= last blog ..Epic fail =-.
The UK uses the Mayo/Kaiser model, as does the VA and the military, only they did it first and have been doing it a lot longer than Mayo or K-P, but people don’t like “socialized medicine” because it’s inefficient and doesn’t work 😉
The US government will pay for medical school if you agree to locate in under-served areas. The problem is that people sign up for the program, take the benefits, and then refuse to go where they promised and have to be hounded to pay back the money.
Greed is the problem.