Instead Of Being More Efficient, Private Insurers' Medicare Advantage Plans Have Cost Medicare Almost $300 Billion More Over The Life Of The Program

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/260424.php

Medical News Today, May 14, 2013

A study published online finds that the private insurance companies that participate in Medicare under the Medicare Advantage program and its predecessors have cost the publicly funded program for the elderly and disabled an extra $282.6 billion since 1985, most of it over the past eight years. In 2012 alone, private insurers were overpaid $34.1 billion.

That's wasted money that should have been spent on improving patient care, shoring up Medicare's trust fund or reducing the federal deficit, the researchers say.

READ MORE

Dr. Mitchiner explains single payer to his emergency medicine colleagues, and to all of us

Posted by Don McCanne MD on Friday, Nov 2, 2012
This entry is from Dr. McCanne's Quote of the Day, a daily health policy update on the single-payer health care reform movement. The QotD is archived on PNHP's website.

It’s Time for Single-Payer

By James C. Mitchiner, MD, MPH, American College of Emergency Physicians
ACEP News, August 7, 2012

“You can always trust the Americans to do the right thing, once they’ve tried everything else.”

Winston Churchill’s iconic remark, reportedly issued at the dawn of America’s entry into World War II, is equally applicable to the present American health care debate and the crisis that spawned it. Regardless of whether you are elated or disappointed with June’s historic Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, it is certainly no panacea for the problems facing U.S. health care. Even with the law intact, and despite its best intentions, it will still leave some 25 million uninsured, underinsure millions more, expand the corporatization of health care, and do little to control the escalating costs of care over the long term. So it’s clear we need to do the right thing: the creation of a national, universal, publicly funded health care system, free of the corrupting power of profit-oriented health insurance, and at the same time capable of passing constitutional muster. In short, the right thing is an expanded and improved Medicare-for-All program, otherwise known as single-payer.

Don’t be so shocked. For the last 30 years, we have tried all the alternatives, and none of them have worked.

READ MORE