PNHP

Surgery Prices Surge With Innovation and Consolidation Under Obamacare

Surgery Prices Surge With Innovation and Consolidation Under Obamacare

By Bill Briggs
NBC News, August 31, 2014

The price to remove a gall bladder or replace a hip has spiked more than 20 percent during the past five years, according to an analysis of data collected for NBC News.

Surgery has bloomed into a $500 billion industry in the United States, where 80 to 100 million procedures are performed annually — a per-capita rate that’s some 50 percent higher than in the European Union, said Dr. John Birkmeyer, a researcher and adjunct professor at the Dartmouth Institute and in the university’s Community & Family Medicine program.

The reason? Expensive yet safer technologies and hospital consolidations that create medical monopolies, according to doctors and researchers.

For hospitals, surgery is the No. 1 revenue source. That encourages medical center administrators to ensure operating suites remain humming — an assembly-line mentality that can lead to unnecessary procedures and spiraling prices, experts say.

“The cost of surgery is growing at a surprising rate,” said Birkmeyer, a leading researcher on healthcare trends. He bases his calculations on national Medicare claims data.

A price check on four of the most common procedures reveals the inflationary trends hitting ORs since 2009:

  • Hernia repair, up 16 percent, with a “total fair price” of $5,056, according to Healthcare Bluebook.
  • Gall bladder removal, up 21 percent, with a “total fair price” of $5,532.
  • Hysterectomy, up 19 percent, with a “total fair price” of $11,780.
  • Hip replacement, up 24 percent, with a “total fair price” of $22,606.

The cost-increase data was generated for NBC News by Healthcare Bluebook, an online guide that helps consumers shop for the best prices in their areas for various medical services. The dollar amounts show the “total fair price” for each surgery as estimated by the website.

Overall, health care inflation has averaged about 4 percent per year during the past five years, Dr. Jeffrey J. Rice, chief executive officer of Healthcare Bluebook, based in Brentwood, Tennessee.

Further causing surgical costs to surge: The U.S. health care economy is built on a tilted foundation. Insurance-company contracts can vastly differ from one hospital to another just blocks away, skewing prices for the same treatments.

“There is almost always a 500 percent — or more — variation for health care services in most cities,” Rice said. “For example, an MRI may cost $500 at one facility and over $3,000 at another facility across the street.”

Surgeons know this, of course. Their fees, dictated by insurance contracts or by Medicare, are included in the overall price of any operation.

“I can take out a gall bladder, and a surgeon in the next room can take out another gall bladder, but he or she may be with a different network of doctors or a different hospital system that negotiated better (insurance) contracts,” said Dr. Paul A. Ruggieri, a general surgeon in Fall River, Massachusetts. “He or she can get paid 20 to 30 percent more than what I get paid regardless of the outcome.”

Those hospital “systems” and doctor “networks” are rooted in a consolidation of care that’s been steadily gobbling up a greater share of the U.S. medical landscape and are a chief driver of the rising surgical prices, according to Birkmeyer, Rice and Ruggieri.

“Hospitals and their pricing systems have, for a very long time, been shielded from competitive market forces,” said Ruggieri, author of “The Cost of Cutting,” out Tuesday. “Hospitals have been allowed to charge whatever they want to charge to third-party payers (insurers). There’s been no transparency to the public in how hospital pricing is determined.”

And as more local hospitals end competitions and merge, the idea of winning new patients through lower prices vanishes, the experts said.

Consider Boston. In 1994, Massachusetts lawmakers allowed Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital to consolidate into a one system known as Partners HealthCare. According to the New York Times: “Investigations by the state attorney general’s office have documented that the merger gave the hospitals enormous market leverage to drive up health care costs in the Boston area by demanding high reimbursements from insurers that were unrelated to the quality or complexity of care delivered.”

The Affordable Health Care Act — or Obamacare — fueled even more hospital consolidations, Birkmeyer asserts.

The law created Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) that “incentivize doctors and other providers to work together to provide more coordinated care to their patients,” former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote in March 2013. These ACOs “agree to take responsibility for the cost and quality of their patients’ care, (and) to improve care coordination and safety.”

They also boost the costs of surgeries, Birkmeyer asserts.

“That drive toward hospitals forming bigger conglomerations of networks and physician practices has reduced competition, and in a non-Medicare population, has enabled hospital systems in many parts of the country to charge far more,” Birkmeyer said.

At the same time, OR innovation — great for patients, tough on wallets — has bumped up surgery prices.

Those tech advances include robotic surgeries, now performed hundreds of thousands of times a year for certain procedures, including hysterectomies. A doctor sits near the operating table at a console, where he or she can manipulate robotic arms while watching through a 3-D viewfinder.

“Those have very positive effects in respect to recovery or the risks of complications for patients,” Birkmeyer said.

“But technology is very costly for hospitals and, ultimately, those costs get passed to insurers — and to the rest of us.”

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/surgery-prices-surge-innovation-consolidation-under-obamacare-n191901

Compensation for health insurance executives

Report: Health Law Ups Taxes On Insurers With Big Pay Packages

By Julie Appleby
Kaiser Health News, August 27, 2014

While average compensation for top health insurance executives hit $5.4 million each last year (up from $5.1 million in 2012), a little-noticed provision in the federal health law sharply reduced insurers’ ability to shield much of that pay from corporate taxes.

As a result, insurers owed at least $72 million more to the U.S. Treasury last year, said the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank in Washington D.C.

Researchers analyzed the compensation of 57 executives at the 10 largest publicly traded health plans, finding they earned a combined $300 million in 2013. Insurers were able to deduct 27 percent of that from their taxes as a business expense, estimates the report. Before the health law, 96 percent would have been deductible.

UnitedHealth Group, which paid CEO and President Stephen Hemsley about $28 million in pay and stock options in 2013, had the biggest tax bill among the 10 companies, the report found. Hemsley’s compensation accounted for nearly $6 million of the firm’s estimated $19 million in taxes that the report says it owed on  pay packages for five executives under the health law.

“They’re paying more in taxes just to protect these pay packages,” said Sarah Anderson, global economy project director at the institute.

Under the 2010 law, insurers can deduct only the first $500,000 of annual compensation per employee from corporate taxes, down from $1 million allowed before the law’s passage.  The law also requires insurers to include so-called “performance pay,” such as stock options, which often represent a hefty portion of an executive’s pay.

http://capsules.kaiserhealthnews.org/index.php/2014/08/report-health-law-ups-taxes-on-insurers-with-big-pay-packages/

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Covered California’s Peter Lee nets bonus, Obamacare site nets 1.2 million enrollees

By Chris Rauber
San Francisco Business Times, August 22, 2014

Covered California’s executive director, Peter Lee, has won a one-time $52,528 bonus for his role in launching the Obamacare exchange in the Golden State, which apparently netted 1.2 million enrollees all told during its first open enrollment period.

Lee’s one-time bonus is his first pay increase in three years… “excepting general state increases,” and represents a 20 percent “incentive award” based on his annual $262,644 salary.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2014/08/covered-californias-peter-lee-nets-bonus.html?page=all

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

There are a great many reasons that health care reform activists believe that private, investor-owned insurers should be eliminated from our health care financing, but one reason that is particularly offensive is the outrageous compensation packages for their executives. For that reason, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) included a provision prohibiting insurers from writing off for tax purposes more than $500,000 per executive, as a means to discourage the excessive executive pay.

Well, it didn’t work. Instead of taking those taxes out of the excessive salaries, executives were given pay increases averaging $300,000, raising their incomes to an average of $5.4 million. Although more corporate taxes were paid, those funds were recovered through higher premiums charged to the purchasers of health plans.

Compare the executive pay of the private insurers to that of Peter Lee, the head of California’s ACA insurance exchange – by far the largest and most successful ACA exchange in the nation. With his performance bonus, his income was only about one-twentieth of the average income of the executives of the largest publicly-traded health plans. In fact, Stephen Hemsley of UnitedHealth Group received almost 100 times as much as Lee.

These differences reflect the priorities of invested-owned corporations as opposed to quasi-public agencies. One is about making the most money possible, and the other is about serving the needs of the people.

Make no mistake. The ACA exchanges are still the wrong model because they contract with these same private insurers that perpetuate their abusive practices, such as overpaying their executives. Under a single payer system, administrators such as Peter Lee would be providing us with much greater value for their services since single payer systems eliminate much of the administrative waste while spending appropriate amounts for health care, and, yes, spending appropriate amounts for our public administrators.

Insurers shoving “advanced illness counselors” on us

Operator? Business, Insurer Take On End-of-Life Issues By Phone

By Elana Gordon, WHYY
Kaiser Health News, August 27, 2014

Kate Schleicher, 27,  is a licensed clinical social worker, who knows almost as little about you as you do about her. Except she knows your phone number, your insurance provider and that you are pretty sick.

Schleicher is one of 50 social workers at a company called Vital Decisions. After sending a letter (people rarely respond) counselors essentially cold-call to offer what they describe as “nondirected” end-of-life counseling.

The hope of this program, she says, is to build a relationship over the phone, so (the patient) might be comfortable discussing his situation and his goals. Then he’ll be empowered to communicate those things with others, including his family and his doctors. He could also choose to allow the counselor to talk to his doctors or family directly. It’s paid for by insurers and federal privacy rules permit this for business purposes.

And when these conversations do happen, there’s can be another byproduct: reduced costs. Research is finding that when patients fully understand aggressive care, many choose less of it.

But some people are wary of the company’s approach. Dr. Lauris Kaldjian, professor of bioethics at the University of Iowa, has concerns about the social worker, patient and family never actually meeting. “Because if you don’t have enough knowledge about what’s actually going on with the patient, it would actually be irresponsible to pretend to have discussion that depends upon such knowledge.” 

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2014/August/27/insurers-new-business-end-of-life-conversations.aspx

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Vital Decisions

Vital Decisions is an innovative organization that assists patients and families dealing with advanced illness. We help patients clarify their values and preferences and then communicate with their family and care team to actualize those preferences. Our clients include several leading national, regional, and local health care plans which offer our service free of charge to appropriate individuals within their member populations.

We are a privately held company located in the Metropark business complex in Edison, NJ. The Company is profitable, and cash flow-positive, and is a leader in the growing field of advanced illness counseling.

The Company is a portfolio company of MTS Health Investors, the New York-based healthcare private equity firm.

http://www.vitaldecisions.net/careers.asp

HHS.gov: Health Information Privacy: “Business Associates”: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/coveredentities/businessassociates.html

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

When you are faced with advanced illness, perhaps nearing the end of life, where would you want to turn for medical advice on how to get through this difficult time? Your personal physician and health care team? Private health insurers, always looking for more administrative innovations to sell us, are now using high pressure tactics to force “advanced illness counselors” into the management of your care.

Who are these counselors? In the example given, they are employees of Vital Decisions, a private, for-profit corporation that sells its services to private insurance companies. They use your confidential medical diagnoses that have been provided to them by the private insurers to market to you an advisory service on negotiating the health care system. After an introductory letter that is routinely ignored, the counselors cold-call to try to convince you to accept their end-of-life counseling. Of course, this is “at no cost to you” since your insurer pays for this service. The services are provided over the phone from offices in New Jersey – a definition of personal care that only the insurers can understand. The clients of Vital Decisions are the private insurers, not the patients, nor the physicians, nor any other members of the health care team.

With today’s emphasis on privacy, how could unrelated business entities gain enough information about you to make a contact? In another concession to the private insurers, HHS allows them to share this confidential information with “business associates” – basically any business entity that might interact with the insurer as the insurer carries out its business functions. It is the private insurers that sic on you these end-of-life-care marketeers just at a time that you do not want any more extrinsic intrusions since you are suffering enough already.

Although the insurers say that they are paying for these services, they are actually paid by plan enrollees in the form of higher premiums. What is worse, these services are classified as health care related services and can be included in the insurers’ medical loss ratios. They do not apply to the 15% or 20% limit on administrative costs. In fact, since they are counted as medical losses, it allows the insurers even more leeway in adding on yet more administrative services. Since the percentages are fixed, more medical losses allow more administrative services – the primary product that the private insurers are selling us.

As a portfolio company of MTS Health Investors, the New York-based healthcare private equity firm, Vital Decisions is taking very good care of Wall Street, while intruding in our most difficult time of life and then walking away with our health care dollars.

Regular readers know what a single payer national health program would do with these parasites. They’d be out the door, right now.

Doctor’s prognosis: American-style health care a nightmare

By Inge De Becker, M.D.
The Chronicle Herald (Halifax, Nova Scotia), Aug. 26, 2014

As a Canadian physician who now lives south of the 49th parallel, I’m alarmed that Canada’s publicly financed national health-care system is once again under attack

Nine years ago, we witnessed Dr. Jacques Chaoulli’s legal attack on medicare in Quebec. Then we saw the Harper government’s failure to renegotiate a new Canada Health Accord this past March. And now Dr. Brian Day, owner of the for-profit Cambie Surgery Centre in Vancouver, is unleashing his drive to “profitize” health care in British Columbia.

On Sept. 8, a trial to hear a constitutional challenge to B.C.’s health system that Dr. Day launched in 2008 will begin in Vancouver. Day wants to strike down provincial legislation that limits private payments for medically needed services by claiming that these laws violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Should he win, the door will open for an American-style health-care system (consistently ranked lowest in performance among wealthy nations — and the most expensive) with its profit-driven insurance companies, bloated administrative costs, and inequitable access.

Let me tell you about my experience with the U.S. health-care system. I am a pediatric ophthalmologist by training and, like all of us, I am occasionally also a patient. In 2008, for personal reasons — not for a better job — I chose to move across the border from my home in Nova Scotia to Minnesota.

I knew that the health-care system in both countries would be different. But I did not grasp what that meant until I lived the difference.

My learning curve as a patient in the U.S. was brutal: even as a “well-insured” patient, I suddenly was dealing with pre-authorizations, in-network/out-of-network issues, co-pays, co-insurance, deductibles, health savings accounts, and EOBs (Explanation of Benefits) which look like bills but aren’t.

The accounting department of my HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) overbilled me by thousands of dollars. I stalled with the payment.

On a bright Saturday morning, I received an intimidating call from a collection agency for unpaid medical bills. Never mind how that affected my credit rating.

In Canada, I paid taxes, had a Nova Scotia health card that guaranteed access to medically needed care anywhere in the country, used the health-care system if I needed it, got to choose my doctor, and did not have to worry about bills. With private insurance in the U.S., I learned not to take the Canadian experience for granted anymore.

In Canada, I benefited from superb oncology care. In Canada, my son was in a catastrophic car crash. He spent seven days in a state-of-the-art neuro-intensive care unit. Not one bill, not one phone call to or from an insurance company disrupted emotionally charged times.

My learning curve as a physician practising in the U.S. was equally unpleasant. For the first time in my professional life, I had to deal with the intrusion of third parties — health insurance companies — between the patient and me.

I had to keep in mind that a patient’s insurance may not cover the tests and treatments needed, that common procedures needed to be pre-authorized by an insurance clerk, that certain things needed to be done before the insurance ran out, or that some treatments had to be delayed to the next “benefit year.”

I have been an unknowing accomplice in causing great anxiety and financial harm to a patient and his family: a $24,000 bill for services that were not covered because the patient had gone “out-of-network.”

The U.S. is the world’s richest democracy, yet it has decided that health care is a commodity for the privileged who can pay. Its health-care system is an opaque and complex patchwork of competing multiple payers, causing mammoth administrative costs (12 per cent for U.S. private multi-payer insurance overhead vs. 2.1 per cent for Canadian public single payer insurance — i.e. medicare).

Each year, up to 45,000 people die from a treatable condition because they lacked coverage and could not access care. Medical bills cause 56 million adult Americans, more than 20 per cent of adults between the ages of 19 and 64, to struggle financially, and about 650,000 to go bankrupt annually, affecting 2,608,119 individuals.

Other rich and civilized democracies have made the fundamental moral decision that access to health care is a human right and have figured out a way to make it happen. Canada is one of them.

Rather than sliding down the slippery slope toward a U.S.-style system, I ask you to stand on guard for Canadian medicare. Please reject Dr. Day’s bid to undermine it.

Dr. Inge De Becker practised in Nova Scotia for 20 years. She now resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/1232079-doctor-s-prognosis-american-style-health-care-a-nightmare

Jonathan Bernstein: “Public opinion is an incoherent mess”

Loving and Hating Obamacare With One Muddled Mind

By Jonathan Bernstein
Bloomberg View, August 25, 2014

E.J. Dionne has a nice column pointing out that while “Obamacare” remains unpopular, most of the provisions are well-liked, and thus Democrats should run on the issue. As regular readers know, I certainly agree that the individual components of reform are far more popular than reform overall. Actually, support for key provisions of the law, including coverage of pre-existing conditions, health-insurance exchanges offering subsidies to middle-income policy holders and Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, have always polled well.

Moreover caution is always in order with issue polling. When these kinds of polls show public opinion fractured, it’s tempting to believe that one side or the other represents voters’ “true” support. That’s the wrong way to interpret such polls. Yes, the ACA polls badly while most of its components poll well. But that doesn’t mean that the ACA is genuinely unpopular (as most opponents suggest) or that it’s genuinely popular (as most supporters contend). There is no underlying truth to be excavated from the results; the best we can do is say that public opinion is inconsistent.

Well, that’s the best we observers can do. Campaign operatives, in contrast, can counsel their candidates to stress whatever is popular. What those operatives shouldn’t do is to fall for their own spin, or let their candidates fall for it.

The broader point: We can measure public opinion, but sometimes – actually, quite often – public opinion is an incoherent mess. Voters have plenty of things other than politics going on in their lives; it’s not surprising that they should find the strongest selling points from both sides quite appealing and let it go at that. For those of us who pay close attention, it may seem weird that someone could hate Obamacare while loving almost every part of it. There must be one overriding opinion hidden in there — pro or con — that good research can isolate, no? Well, no. Sometimes, incoherence in the polls simply reflects incoherence among voters. We just have to live with that.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-08-25/loving-and-hating-obamacare-with-one-muddled-mind

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

The public reaction to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is very instructive as far as understanding public attitudes toward single payer reform.

Most of the specific policies in ACA have been supported for many years by those who are relatively well informed on the issues – a minority of our population. The negative views of the public have been formed in the hollow echo chamber filled with empty political rhetoric devoid of illuminating explanations – a message chamber that reaches most of our people. The political attack has been aimed at President Obama and the Democratic Party, but not at ACA’s beneficial policies. Thus many in the media have correctly reported that “Obamacare” continues to poll poorly – as a political construct – whereas the specific improvements in health care coverage – the health policies – have support of the majority.

Although the situation with the public attitude towards single payer is similar, it has not had nearly the same intensity of exposure has had ACA. More Americans have now heard the term “single payer,” but the majority still have a poor understanding of what a tremendous improvement it would be over our highly dysfunctional, wasteful, inefficient, and inequitable multi-payer system. That is, the public at large is still very poorly informed on single payer policies.

The hollow echo chamber of empty political rhetoric targeting single payer has been around much longer but has been maintaining a lower profile. As long as single payer reform does not seem to be imminent, the effort of opponents has been directed to building anti-government memes that can be rapidly brought to the front should a single payer reform effort gain traction.

Examples of this latter phenomenon include Proposition 186 in California and Measure 23 in Oregon. Both of these single payer measures polled favorably until close to the elections. In both instances, it took only a couple of weeks of mindless trashing of the measures to result in a tidal wave of opposition. They were defeated by empty rhetoric and not by opposition to beneficial health policies.

In today’s article, Jonathan Bernstein makes the important point that “quite often public opinion is an incoherent mess.” Look how much difficulty the supporters of ACA are having in getting the message out about the genuine benefits of ACA when the listeners are exposed to a background of meaningless cacophony generated in the hollow echo chamber.

When single payer is ready for its day, the cacophony will be almost unbearable. That is why it is so important now to pull all stops in educating the public on single payer benefits. They will need a much better understanding of the concept so that they can sort out the facts from the noise.

Bernstein says, “Sometimes, incoherence in the polls simply reflects incoherence among voters. We just have to live with that.” No, we don’t have to live with that. We simply need to build our own colossal echo chamber spewing out the facts. Education. Education. Education.

Single-payer would provide better health care to more people

By Mimi Signor, R.N.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Letters, Aug. 26, 2014

Regarding “Hospitals team up with banks to get patients to pay” followed by “Charity care cut for some who declined coverage” (Aug. 24) exemplifies Missouri’s hospitals’ lean and mean business model. The first article talks about ways to make patients pay for acute care already administered. The second talks about demanding payments prior to non-urgent care.

Missouri hospitals believe mandatory commercial insurance will keep them in the black. However, the majority of people who face bankruptcy due to medical costs are those who have insurance. Commercial insurance companies enforce co-pays, deductibles and other high out-of-pocket costs as a disincentive to seeking care. Insurers often deny payment for care in advance or after care has been provided.

We have the ability to cure, but have lost the capacity to care. Rather than bullying the sick into commercial insurance they cannot afford to buy or use, Missouri hospitals should support passage of HR 676, “Improved Medicare for All,” the most fiscally conservative and fair way to provide better health care to more people. Missouri hospitals would receive guaranteed payment from the single payer, Medicare, for care provided. Missourians would get medical care without fear of bankruptcy, and hospitals would not need to dun patients through collection agencies.

Mimi Signor resides in University City.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/mailbag/letters-to-the-editor/single-payer-would-provide-better-health-care-to-more-people/article_bfb14297-74d6-58f1-b607-97a2c0ba6097.html

Beware siren song of private-payer care

In the U.S., the doctor is in, but maybe financially unavailable

By Jessica Schorr Saxe, M.D.
Vancouver Sun, Aug. 25, 2014

The middle-aged woman came to my family medicine practice for a routine visit to check her high blood pressure. It was the highest I’ve ever seen in the office: 280/180. I told her to go to the emergency department for probable admission to the hospital.

Her eyes crinkled, and tears fell silently. I thought she was crying because I had frightened her about the urgency of her condition. I was wrong.

“I can’t go to the hospital,” she said, “I can’t afford it.”

I have practised for more than 30 years in a health centre that cares for low-income patients in Charlotte, N.C. As is typical in the United States, our patients rely on a hodgepodge of funding sources. Almost all patients face some financial barriers to care.

A few have private insurance (increasingly with high co-pays and deductibles), many have Medicare (for the elderly) or Medicaid (for some of the poorest of the poor), and many are uninsured. Of the uninsured, some are “self-pay” and some qualify for sliding-scale charges pegged to their income.

While my patient with extreme hypertension is deeply etched into my mind, I could tell you many similar stories.

The typical new patients in my practice have not had health care for months or years. In many cases, they once had employer-based insurance and access to private doctors, then lost their job and thus their coverage and their physicians. Some cry when they talk about the interruption of these long-term relationships with their doctors.

One such patient had been hospitalized with severe congestive heart failure and had lost his full-time job because of his illness. Although he continued to work part-time, he was uninsured and could no longer see his usual doctor.

It took months for him to see me. When he did, I promptly sent him to a cardiologist who prescribed open-heart surgery. He received it, but he could have died waiting for care, as thousands of Americans do every year.

The constant churning of patients in and out of coverage, or in and out of private insurance plans (each with a restrictive network of providers), is cumbersome and costly. Such transitions require patients to seek out new doctors who request and scrutinize old records and sometimes order tests, not realizing they have already been done.

The U.S. system creates other challenges to providing good care. Some patients miss appointments simply because they don’t have enough money for their insurance co-pays.

I approach each patient with an algorithm. This patient has Blue Cross/Blue Shield and has these options, this one has Medicare and another set of options for referrals and medications, this patient is on sliding scale and another set: oops, no options here for certain services. It is even more complicated, because the options change.

Unlike many other places in the U.S., we are fortunate at my health centre to have many services for the uninsured, but there are still many gaps. Elective orthopedic surgery, for example, is not even an option.

I have a patient with a painful hand condition and several patients who need knee or hip replacements. Many of them would be able to work if they could afford the recommended surgery, but instead they live in pain and poverty.

I know some people in Canada decry excessive waiting times for elective procedures. The waiting times for patients on the U.S. side are sometimes infinite or until they reach the age of 65 (decades away for some), when they finally receive our Medicare.

Medical care in the United States costs twice as much per capita as in Canada, yet we have tens of millions who are uninsured, two million people a year who are victims of medical bankruptcy, and some of the worst health statistics in the developed world.

As Canada considers the “Cambie case,” i.e. a constitutional challenge to your single-payer system, I urge you to protect and defend what you have. Allowing private payers to jump the queue, and expanding the role of private insurance and for-profit medicine, will inevitably lead down the road to worsening inequities, greater expense, and poorer quality.

Learn from your neighbour to the south. Don’t follow our disastrous example. Improve your imperfect but fundamentally sound medicare system, and continue to enjoy good care, good health, and the financial savings your system offers.

Jessica Schorr Saxe is a family physician in Charlotte, N.C.

http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/op-ed/Opinion+Beware+siren+song+private+payer+care/10147696/story.html

2014 National Strategy Conference for Single Payer

By Don McCanne
August 25, 2014

This weekend numerous organizations dedicated to single payer reform assembled in Oakland, California for the 2014 National Strategy Conference. Participating organizations included Healthcare NOW!, Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Healthcare, One Payer States, National Nurses United, Physicians for a National Health Program, Progressive Democrats of America, and many others. So what was accomplished?

Above all, just gathering dedicated single payer supporters together in a single weekend meeting provided renewed energy and passion amongst the attendees, confirming that the single payer movement is not only still alive, it is thriving. We have a future.

Did we develop a national strategy that will culminate in enactment of single payer reform with the installation of a new government after the 2016 elections? Well, not exactly, but nobody expected that. What we did accomplish was the sharing of ideas on strategy, policy, politics, single payer education, state and federal legislation, and innumerable other components of a social movement that would lead to single payer.

In both the formal sessions and in informal conversations there was a very broad spectrum of ideas discussed, though not all of the ideas mesh well. And this is from a solid core of single payer activists. But all views were expressed with the intent of advancing health care justice.

Others attending will certainly have different take-home points, but mine was that we each should continue to do what we are doing while helping to open new avenues in advancing the cause. Especially helpful would be efforts to educate others, expand grassroots efforts, and work to form coalitions with other social justice organizations.

There was a consensus that we should not waste time and squander energy by becoming divided over process. We need to direct that energy to making progress towards our goal of a single payer national health program – an improved Medicare for all.

Expand Medicare to improve access and reduce costs

By Thomas Meisenhelder
San Bernardino County (Calif.) Sun, Aug. 22, 2014

On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the nation’s most successful medical care program, Medicare. This year marks the 49th anniversary of our commitment to provide good, accessible health care to those over 65. This program has been hugely successful and now covers 98 percent of the country’s senior citizens. Medicare costs rise more slowly than other health care costs and seniors with Medicare are more satisfied with their health care than those with private insurance.

We all know from the experience of our own families that Medicare has been a savior for ourselves and our loved ones. It is a resource we count on to preserve our economic and physical health. We should provide this resource to everyone.

It is no secret that the United States is the only developed country that has a health care system totally in the hands of private corporations that see health as a commodity to be sold for a profit. While the Affordable Care Act does expand coverage to perhaps 20 million more people, it does not cover everyone and it does not address the power of corporate interests or the related issues of rising health care costs and quality of care. Indeed, it mandates that people buy insurance from the private insurance industry.

Extending Medicare to all would provide good, accessible health care to all of us and lower costs to both individuals and their employers. We would bring to an end our disgraceful two-tiered system where the rich and well-off can access the latest treatments and technologies but the rest of us, especially lower income groups, suffer from no health care at all or care only in overcrowded and under-resourced clinics and emergency rooms. In addition, it would allow everyone freedom of choice when it comes to picking physicians and other providers. And, it would mean that we keep our health care coverage even if we lose our job.

Most likely, “Medicare for all” would also improve the quality of health care in the United States, moving us up to European levels of health as well as improving our satisfaction with the medical care we receive.

Research shows that “Medicare for all” would save nearly $600 billion in health care costs. These figures suggest that these savings would fund the expansion of Medicare coverage, improved benefits, and even allow the elimination of premiums and co-payments (with money left over to, for instance, pay down the national debt).

Substantial savings would come from reducing the obscene $476 billion in administrative costs billed by the notoriously inefficient private insurance industry. Medicare has merely 3 percent in administrative costs compared to 20 percent in private insurance firms.

Another $116 billion in savings would come by way of the new “Medicare for all” system’s size and the power it would have to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry. This bargaining power would surely enable a reduction in drug prices to the much lower levels experienced (through similar policies) in Europe.

Adequate funding could come from increased efficiencies in the health care sector and the replacement of employer contributions to private insurers with a (in most cases) lower payroll tax. Additional funding could come from a reformed, simpler, and more just income tax system and, if needed, a financial transactions tax on Wall Street.

Let’s celebrate the 49th anniversary of Medicare by calling on our representatives in Congress to support HR 676, the “Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act,” which would provide Medicare coverage for all while also saving the economy $592 billion.

Thomas Meisenhelder is professor emeritus of sociology at Cal State San Bernardino.

http://www.sbsun.com/opinion/20140822/expand-medicare-to-improve-access-and-reduce-costs-guest-commentary

Beware when insurance is too good

By C.V. Allen
The Modesto (Calif.) Bee, Aug. 23, 2014

My column on the inefficiency in Medicare Advantage (Page D1, July 29) inspired several letters to the editor. Some were from people who are enjoying the benefits of the plan (which is not the issue), a few were in agreement with my column because they understand the inflationary effect of Medicare Advantage borne by the taxpayer, and others objected – often with the same phrases and wording, suggesting a common origin.

So I’ll try to explain this a different way. The following is part myth (the government doesn’t sell auto insurance) and part reality – an example of how an insurance program can be gamed for private benefit to the detriment of the public – which is very much the issue.

Those wishing details can pick up a copy of  “Medicare overpayment to private plans,” an article in the International Journal of Health Services from May 10, 2013, at the Maino Community Health Library at McHenry Village or you can find it online.

Pretend for a moment you are a government employee responsible for developing an automobile insurance plan for sale to the public. You know that most drivers rarely use insurance, but there is a minority – those convicted of DUIs, teenagers – whose bad driving records significantly raise insurance costs for all. But your plan includes everyone and will cost $75 a month to break even.

One day a man sidles up to you and says, “Have I got a deal for you!”

He says he’s from Los Angeles; he’s an ordinary looking man with impenetrable sunglasses, blue suede shoes and a salesman’s soothing voice.

“You pay me $70 per person and I’ll sell auto insurance to anybody who wants it – and save you $5 each!”

Because you weren’t born yesterday, you reply, “You’ll have to take all comers, even those with a bad driving history. How can you do it so cheap?”

He smiles and says, “I run a driving school and I teach people how to avoid accidents.”

Saving $5 per person is enticing, so you go to your boss, who says fine, and the deal is made. For a while things go well and he sells a lot of insurance. Then you begin to notice that the costs of those who have remained in your plan is rising, first to $80 a month then gradually to $85. You go to your “friend” and ask how he is doing.

“Just fine,” he says, “and my clients just love my policy.” No wonder. Not only do they get insurance at lower rates, they also get amenities – tickets to the Giants, free gym membership and picnics in the park.

Because you weren’t born yesterday, you call a detective friend, explain the situation and ask him to investigate.

A month later he reports: It seems that most of those with DUIs and bad driving records have somehow migrated back to your policies, and teenagers are largely missing from your “friend’s” private policies. Without those high-risk drivers, his costs are down to about $60 per person while he is receiving $70. He now drives a Maserati and recently bought a big house in L.A.

So you go back to your old pal, and he gets upset when you mention all this to him. “Leave things alone,” he says, “or you’ll be sorry.”

When word of this slips out and there are calls to cancel the wasteful private program, there is an uproar from its members and the strutting of politicians vowing to “stop the massive cuts” when no such cuts are planned – only a return to the basic plan so costs are kept low for everyone.

Concerned, you ask your boss, “Who pays the added cost of this plan?” He smiles a sad smile and says, “The taxpayers of course, but they’ll never understand – it’s the way things work. Were you just born yesterday? By the way, what’s the name of your pal’s plan?”

“Auto Insurance Advantage,” you say.

Does this clarify the situation? Or were you born yesterday?

C.V. Allen is a semi-retired physician and community columnist.

http://www.modbee.com/2014/08/23/3497850/cv-allen-beware-when-insurance.html

CMMI blows a billion dollars on a flawed study

Project Evaluation Activity in Support of Partnership for Patients: Task 2 Evaluation Progress Report

Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI)Submitted 7/10/2014

The Partnership for Patients (PfP) campaign was launched in April 2011 with the ambitious goals of reducing preventable hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) by 40 percent and 30-day hospital readmissions by 20 percent. To reduce harm at this level of magnitude, the campaign implemented a strategy to align all health care stakeholders, including federal and other public and private health care payors, providers, and patients, to focus on this issue concurrently. By influencing everyone to move in the same direction at the same time, the program strove to overcome the inherently limited reach of any single initiative operating in a complex environment. The three major components of the campaign, conceptualized as “engines,” are the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) investment engine, the federal partner alignment engine, and the outside partner engine. The program is national in scope, due to its level of implementation. For example, over 70 percent of general acute care hospitals in the United States (U.S.), representing over 80 percent of admissions, worked with PfP-funded Hospital Engagement Networks (HENs) during 2012-2013.

Findings

The PfP campaign focuses on 11 areas of patient harm. To date, the evaluation has found clear evidence for decreased rates of harms in five of the eleven areas, meaning the decreases are statistically significant, and/or meet statistical process control criteria for a special cause decrease, and/or (in cases where only aggregated data are available) are large in magnitude. These areas include obstetrical early elective deliveries (OB-EED), readmissions, adverse drug events (ADE), ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), and central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI). In the other six areas, to date, the evaluation has found mixed evidence, meaning some datasets show decreases, while others show no change, or even worsening, including venous thromboembolism (VTE), catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI), other OB adverse events (OB-Other), pressure ulcers, surgical site infections (SSI), and falls.

The cost estimates available to date suggest cumulative savings of between $3.1 to $4 billion as a result of the decreases in harms since the baseline of 2010. Additionally, AHRQ has estimated 15,5001 deaths averted since 2010, based on mortality rate estimates associated with targeted harms. Tables 1 and 2 synthesize the evidence available to date for improvement in the rate of adverse events in each of the 11 areas, and Table 3 provides cost reduction estimates from the two available sources of estimates to date. Since hospital payment policies and other U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) programs that played an important role as part of the PfP campaign were in place and making changes over time, it is not possible at this time for the evaluation to identify the portion of these harm reductions and savings attributable to the PfP campaign’s direct work with hospitals versus alignment of forces for harm reduction versus other harm reduction work that would have continued with or without PfP.

http://innovation.cms.gov/Files/reports/PFPEvalProgRpt.pdf

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About the CMS Innovation Center

The Innovation Center was established by section 1115A of the Social Security Act (as added by section 3021 of the Affordable Care Act). Congress created the Innovation Center for the purpose of testing “innovative payment and service delivery models to reduce program expenditures …while preserving or enhancing the quality of care” for those individuals who receive Medicare, Medicaid, or Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) benefits.

http://innovation.cms.gov/about/index.html

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Did Hospital Engagement Networks Actually Improve Care?

By Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., and Ashish K. Jha, M.D., M.P.H.
The New England Journal of Medicine, August 21, 2014

Everyone with a role in health care wants to improve the quality and safety of our delivery system. Recently, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released results of its Partnership for Patients Program (PPP) and celebrated large improvements in patient outcomes. But the PPP’s weak study design and methods, combined with a lack of transparency and rigor in evaluation, make it difficult to determine whether the program improved care. Such deficiencies result in a failure to learn from improvement efforts and stifle progress toward a safer, more effective health care system.

CMS launched the PPP in December 2011 as a collaborative comprising 26 “hospital engagement networks” (HENs) representing more than 3700 hospitals, in an effort to reduce the rates of 10 types of harms and readmissions. The HENs work to identify and disseminate effective quality-improvement and patient-safety initiatives by developing learning collaboratives for their member facilities, and they direct training programs to teach hospitals how to improve patient safety. In a February 2013 webcast, CMS announced that the rates of early elective deliveries had dropped 48% among 681 hospitals in 20 HENs and that the national rate of all-cause readmissions had decreased from 19% to 17.8%, though it is unclear which HENs were included for each measure and what time periods were the pre- and post-intervention periods.

These numbers appear impressive, but given the publicly available data and the approach CMS used, it’s nearly impossible to tell whether the PPP actually led to better care. Three problems with the agency’s evaluation and reporting of results raise concerns about the validity of its inferences: a weak design, a lack of valid metrics, and a lack of external peer review for its evaluation. Though the evaluation of many other CMS programs also lacks this basic level of rigor, given the large public investment in the PPP, estimated at $1 billion, and the strong public inferences about its impact, the lack of valid information about its effects is particularly troubling.

The design of a quality-improvement program influences our ability to make reasonable inferences about its benefits to patients. Although individual HENs may have used more rigorous methods, the overall PPP evaluation had three important weaknesses: it used a pre–post design with only single points in the pre and post periods, did not have concurrent controls, and did not specify the pre and post periods a priori. Such an approach is highly subject to bias.

There are alternatives available, including a randomized or even a cluster-randomized trial. If such trials were not feasible, CMS could have used other robust design approaches, such as an interrupted time-series study with concurrent controls. Rather than having a single pre time period and a single post time period, this design entails repeated measurements of the safety indicators before and after the intervention in both HEN and non-HEN hospitals. Such an approach would have provided more valid inferences about the effects of the program, with few additional costs.

Beyond using a poor design, CMS did not use standardized and validated performance measures across all participating hospitals — further hampering inferences about the program’s effects. To support engagement, CMS allowed each HEN to define its own performance measures, with little focus on data quality control.

CMS also required HENs and participating hospitals to submit a large number of process measures of unknown validity. It is essential to use validated measures — ideally those endorsed by the National Quality Forum — unless there is a compelling reason not to. In instances where validated measures are unavailable, instead of using poor quality metrics, CMS can have an agency such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) or the CDC develop measures rapidly.

Finally, CMS made — and presented publicly — inferences about its program’s benefits without having subjected its work to independent evaluation or peer review. Peer review, though imperfect, is a powerful quality control.

The PPP involved an investment of nearly $1 billion to improve care — three times the annual budget of the AHRQ, the lead federal funding agency for implementation science, which often lacks resources for promising projects. With such a sizable investment, CMS could have supported a better evaluation. It could have randomized HENs or hospitals to receive interventions earlier or later; used standardized, validated measures across the HENs; built in basic data quality controls; and independently collected qualitative information alongside quantitative data to learn not just whether the interventions worked but also how and why they did, thereby advancing our understanding of the mechanisms and context of improvement science. These changes would have allowed the country to learn so much more.

The lack of a careful evaluation is symptomatic of a broader problem: some members of the quality-improvement community eschew even modestly rigorous methods, believing that one can simply “know” if an intervention worked. Though maintaining hope and optimism among clinicians is important, when untested interventions are implemented widely, they often fail to improve care. The confidence we can have in an intervention’s efficacy is directly related to the rigor with which it is designed, implemented, and evaluated. Given the strong desire to improve care and the conflicts of interest we all face in evaluating our own work, subjecting all evaluations to external examination is critical.

The field of improvement science is still in its infancy. Given the magnitude of the quality and cost problems in health care and the amount of money invested in mitigating these problems, the public, providers, and policymakers need to have confidence that money used to improve care is being well spent. It’s true that improvement science requires mixed methods and is difficult, but all good science is difficult. Failing to attend closely to issues of design, methods, and metrics leaves us with little confidence in an intervention. For the PPP, which required thousands of hours of clinicians’ time and large sums of money, that lack of confidence is particularly unfortunate. More important, the failure to generate valid, reliable information hampers our ability to improve future interventions, because we are no closer to understanding how to improve care than we were before the PPP. And that is the biggest cost of all.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1405800?query=TOC#t=article

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

Another creation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) – an entity established to test innovations in payment and service delivery models designed to reduce costs and improve quality. How is it doing?

After spending almost a billion dollars on a study designed to reduce hospital-acquired conditions – a budget three times the total annual budget of AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) – we have almost nothing to show for that effort and expense. As the CMMI report states, “Since hospital payment policies and other U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) programs that played an important role as part of the PfP campaign were in place and making changes over time, it is not possible at this time for the evaluation to identify the portion of these harm reductions and savings attributable to the PfP campaign’s direct work with hospitals versus alignment of forces for harm reduction versus other harm reduction work that would have continued with or without PfP.”

In their article on the flaws in this program, Peter Pronovost and Ashish Jha make an observation that typifies what has been wrong with the entire reform process centered on ACA. They state, “some members of the quality-improvement community eschew even modestly rigorous methods, believing that one can simply “know” if an intervention worked. Though maintaining hope and optimism among clinicians is important, when untested interventions are implemented widely, they often fail to improve care.”

Think of some of the prominent personalities involved in crafting and implementing ACA and how outspoken they were and continue to be on what they simply “know” will work – accountable care organizations, bundled payments, pay for performance, competing exchange plans bringing us higher quality at lower cost, placing the empowered consumer in charge through deductibles and other cost sensitivity, and improving payment policies through the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.

The tragedy is that much of this was to avoid adopting a program that every informed person knows really would work – an improved Medicare for all. It would have been far better to have directed that billion dollars towards implementing single payer.

Is Austin Frakt right that Medicare Advantage may be worth the extra cost?

Medicare Advantage Is More Expensive, but It May Be Worth It

By Austin Frakt
The New York Times, August 18, 2014

Medicare Advantage plans — private plans that serve as alternatives to the traditional, public program for those that qualify for it — underperform traditional Medicare in one respect: They cost 6 percent more.

But they outperform traditional Medicare in another way: They offer higher quality. That’s according to research summarized recently by the Harvard health economists Joseph Newhouse and Thomas McGuire, and it raises a difficult question: Is the extra quality worth the extra cost?

In contrast to studies in the 1990s, more recent work finds that Medicare Advantage is superior to traditional Medicare on a variety of quality measures. For example, according to a paper in Health Affairs by John Ayanian and colleagues, women enrolled in a Medicare Advantage H.M.O. are more likely to receive mammography screenings; those with diabetes are more likely to receive blood sugar testing and retinal exams; and those with diabetes or cardiovascular disease are more likely to receive cholesterol testing.

Contemplating these more recent findings on quality alongside the higher taxpayer cost of Medicare Advantage plans invites some cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, we shouldn’t pay more than we need to in order to provide the Medicare benefit; we should demand that taxpayer-financed benefits be provided as efficiently as possible. Medicare Advantage doesn’t look so good from this perspective.

On the other hand, we want Medicare beneficiaries — which we all hope to be someday, if we’re not already — to receive the highest quality of care. Here, as far as we know from research to date, Medicare Advantage shines, at least relative to traditional Medicare.

Is Medicare Advantage worth its extra cost? A decade ago when quality appeared poor, the answer was easy: No. Today one must think harder and weigh costs against program benefits, including its higher quality. The research base is still too thin to provide an objective answer. Mr. Newhouse and Mr. McGuire hedge but lean favorably toward Medicare Advantage, saying cuts in its “plan payments may be shortsighted.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/upshot/medicare-advantage-is-more-expensive-but-it-may-be-worth-it.html?rref=upshot&abt=0002&abg=1

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How Successful Is Medicare Advantage?

By Joseph P. Newhouse and Thomas G. McGuire
The Milbank Quarterly, June 3, 2014 (online)

Quality of Care in TM (traditional Medicare) and MA (Medicare Advantage)

The plans’ medical management methods could, in principle, improve the quality of their care relative to that of TM. Unfortunately, it is difficult to compare the quality of care in TM and MA because the data necessary to do so are sparse (John Ayanian et al). A few comparisons can be made, however, from the data reported by beneficiaries in the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) surveys, although the beneficiaries’ ability to assess the technical quality of their care clearly is limited.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.12061/full

Joseph P. Newhouse is a member of Aetna’s Board of Directors:
http://www.aetna.com/about-us/corporate-governance/board-of-directors.html

Thomas McGuire coauthored the paper, “Making Medicare advantage a middle-class program”:
http://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/publications/making-medicare-advantage-a-middle-class-program

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Medicare Beneficiaries More Likely To Receive Appropriate Ambulatory Services In HMOs Than In Traditional Medicare

By John Z. Ayanian, Bruce E. Landon, Alan M. Zaslavsky, Robert C. Saunders, L. Gregory Pawlson and Joseph P. Newhouse
Health Affairs, July 2013

Our results suggest that the positive effects of more-integrated delivery systems on the quality of ambulatory care in Medicare HMOs may outweigh the potential incentives to restrict care under capitated payments.

From the Conclusion

The Affordable Care Act authorized CMS to begin contracting with accountable care organizations that will share financial risk with CMS for the costs and quality of care received by the traditional Medicare beneficiaries they serve.23 Through the Medicare Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations and Shared Savings Programs, these organizations are eligible to receive bonus payments, initially related to reporting quality measures and subsequently to achieving higher quality of care.

These recent parallel expansions of financial incentives for achieving better quality of care in Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare heighten the need for performance measures that can be compared between these two major components of the Medicare program. Such measures will enable policy makers, health care providers, and Medicare beneficiaries to assess whether the quality of care in Medicare Advantage health plans differs from that provided within accountable care organizations and from that provided outside these organizations in the traditional Medicare program.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/32/7/1228.full

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Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations disappoint

By Don McCanne
PNHP Blog, July 17, 2013

The Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) were already existing health care organizations that were selected as potentially exemplary models that could show the rest of the nation how well ACOs can work to achieve higher quality at lower costs. We now have a report from CMS of the initial “successes” of this model.

Considering the added administrative hassle, the savings were negligible, with only 13 of the 32 organizations saving enough to receive “shared savings” from CMS, and 2 actually lost money.

Even the supposed quality gains were unimpressive since they represented only 15 measurements which the organizations were told in advance would be used to determine whether or not they met quality standards. These teach-to-the-test gains can hardly represent the overall quality status of each organization.

https://pnhp.org/blog/2013/07/17/pioneer-accountable-care-organizations-disappoint/

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D.

The private Medicare Advantage plans promised higher quality at lower cost. They clearly have failed on the promise of lower costs, but are they actually providing improved quality that is worth the extra cost?

Austin Frakt cites the Milbank Quarterly article by Joseph Newhouse and Thomas McGuire as providing the evidence for higher quality. In their article they state, “it is difficult to compare the quality of care in TM (traditional Medicare) and MA (Medicare Advantage) because the data necessary to do so are sparse.” They cite as their source a Health Affairs article by John Ayanian et al (Joseph Newhouse being a coauthor) which states, “These recent parallel expansions of financial incentives for achieving better quality of care in Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare heighten the need for performance measures that can be compared between these two major components of the Medicare program.” Yes, performance measures that we do not have.

The ideological preferences of Newhouse and McGuire can be gleaned from the links above – a bias which shines through in their Milbank Quarterly article.

The point is that, other than for a few primitive teach-to-the-test measurements, measurement of quality is still in the dark ages. The Medicare Advantage plans would be expected to do better on these few measurements since they use them for marketing purposes (Medicare star ratings) and to gain bonuses. Even Austin Frakt writes, “The research base is still too thin to provide an objective answer.”

The case for higher quality in Medicare Advantage plans has not been made.

An excellent article that concurs with this view: “No, We Still Don’t Have Proof That Private Medicare Plans Are Better,” by Thomas Huelskoetter:

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/08/20/3473823/medicare-advantage-costs/