Families USA, March 17, 2021

The realities of the COVID-19 pandemic have made health and health care reform front burner issues for all of us, no matter our political party, race, location, or background

No one in this country should have to worry that they can’t afford the health care they need or have to choose between filling a prescription and paying rent or a mortgage. Families across America agree—and they want to see action.

That’s according to new polling from Families USA and Hart Research Associates. The nationwide, online poll of more than 1,600 voters (fielded January 27 to February 1, 2021) underscores how COVID-19 has made health and health care reform a priority issue for people in America, regardless of political affiliation, race, location, or background. A strong majority of voters—Republican, Democrat, or Independent—want to see real health care solutions this year, particularly around health care costs and prescription drug prices.

As the Biden administration and Congress consider new policies to best serve their constituents, the poll indicates that voters in America are looking for:

• Meaningful results on health care this year. When asked what they want President Biden and Congress to focus on this year, voters indicated that health care is a top-of-mind priority, along with COVID-19 and the economy. Three in four voters say health care should be a high priority for President Biden and Congress this year, including a strong majority of Democrats (91%), independents (75%), and Republicans (58%). These findings hold true across racial, geographic, and gender differences.
• Strong action to address excessive health care costs, particularly for prescription drugs and insurance premiums. More than eight in ten voters believe that the health care system today works more for the benefit of the insurance and drug industries than the average person—and this sentiment holds true across demographic groups and partisan lines. Roughly nine in ten voters say that it is important for Congress and the president to take action to lower prescription drug prices and health care costs this year.
• Real solutions that solve health care problems rather than just making tweaks around the edges. Voters are concerned that Congress will not go far enough to make necessary changes to the health care system. In fact, this concern is much greater than any fear that Congress will go too far. Voters are particularly worried about lack of action in addressing the cost of prescription drugs; 67% are concerned that Congress will not go far enough to bring down prices. Majorities of Democrats, independents, and Republicans hold this opinion.

This year, we have a unique opportunity to finally give people peace of mind as we tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and address concerns that so many share. Now is the moment to deliver what people in America want most: lower health care prices and a healthy and secure future.

https://familiesusa.org…

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D.

The history of Families USA and Physicians for a National Health Program dates back to the Clinton administration effort to expand health care to everyone. When Bill Clinton was offered the choice of a market of private health plans or a single payer national health program, he chose the former – the plan of Families USA. Anyone around then certainly remembers that failure.

Later, “President Barack Obama credited Families USA with playing an instrumental role in promoting the enactment of the ACA and for the organization’s work helping to implement and protect the historic health legislation.” (Wikipedia)

But after a decade of ACA, we still have serious deficiencies in our health care financing system: tens of millions uninsured, tens of millions underinsured with excessive out-of-pocket cost sharing, narrow provider networks that limit choices in health care, high prices, diversion of health care dollars to passive investors, inequity in access to health care, and profoundly excessive administrative services which have made us the most expensive system on earth, in spite of all its deficiencies.

What do people want? The recent polling from Families USA and Hart Research Associates shows that people want affordable health care and affordable prescription drugs, and they want action now. Three-fourths of voters say that health reform should be a high priority this year: 91% of Democrats, 75% of independents, and 58% of Republicans. Support holds across racial, geographic, and gender differences.

Over 80% of voters across various demographic groups and political preferences believe that the health care system today works more for the benefit of the insurance and drug industries than the average person. Voters are concerned that Congress will not go far enough to make changes to the heath care system, outweighing their concern that Congress might go too far.

Families USA has had a quarter of a century to prove that the private insurance market should be the primary source of health care financing in the United States. Based on the wishes of American voters, that model has woefully failed. Even their own poll indicates that people want the system fixed now, and not by the private insurance industry.

A quarter of a century ago, President Clinton said that the single payer model was the better plan but that he was going to go with Ron Pollack’s Families USA private insurance market plan. That was clearly a mistake. President Obama’s tweaks were somewhat beneficial but again fell far short because he left the private insurers in place in the financing infrastructure. President Biden and Congress now have the chance to rectify those errors by enacting and implementing a single payer system of Medicare for All. But we cannot allow the wishes of America to be hidden in a poll. We need to raise our voices in a deafening roar that will be heard throughout the nation, and especially in the White House.

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By Rachel M. Werner, M.D., Ph.D., Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., Hoangmai H. Pham, M.D., M.P.H., Amol S. Navathe, M.D., Ph.D.
Penn, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, February 2021

Executive Summary

A decade after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the vision of moving the U.S. health care system “from volume to value” has been partially realized, with few value-based payment initiatives systematically reducing spending or improving quality. While participation in value-based payments continues to grow, the adoption of advanced forms of value-based payment through alternative payment models lags behind both the goals set by the Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2015 and the threshold required for widespread practice transformation. Furthermore, the complexity of the current suite of alternative payment models and allure of traditional fee-for-service prevent the widespread adoption of full risk-bearing contracts. The high costs of care with the impending insolvency of the Medicare trust fund, persistence of poor quality of care and health disparities along racial and socioeconomic lines, and mixed success of alternative payment models indicate the need for a revamped vision for the 2020s.

The 2020s require a new strategy that moves from a short-term focus on testing new payment models to a long-term focus on expanding models that are most likely to generate substantial savings and improve quality. This white paper outlines a new direction for the federal government — primarily through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) — to chart over the next decade aimed at completing the transition to a health care system that pays for value and reduced health disparities, rather than high volumes of services.

First, CMS must articulate a clear vision for the future of value-based payment. In particular, the vision must align across all publicly financed health care, driving change beyond Medicare and Medicaid. Second, CMS must dramatically simplify the current value-based payment landscape and engage late-adopting providers. Third, for health systems already participating in value-based payment, CMS must accelerate the movement from upside-only shared savings to risk-bearing, population-based alternative payment models while curtailing the ability of providers to opt out of value-based payment altogether. Fourth, CMS must not only pull providers toward advanced alternative payment models, but also structure incentives to push providers away from fee-for-service payment. Finally, achieving health equity must be a central feature and goal of value-based payment. Taken together, these five recommendations provide a path toward widespread adoption and success of alternative payment models, producing better health outcomes for all Americans, reducing wasteful inefficiencies and health disparities, and more effectively stewarding taxpayer funds to support other national priorities.

From the Introduction

A Decade of Movement from Volume to Value

Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has sought to transform U.S. health care from a system that incentivizes volume to one that rewards value. A key part of this strategy has been shifting from fee-for-service (FFS) payment to mechanisms that link provider reimbursement to improved quality and reduced costs. In 2015, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell publicly committed CMS to tying at least 90% of traditional Medicare fee-for-service payments to quality by 2018.

However, simply adding bonuses and penalties to fee-for-service payments is not enough to transform a system with historically high prices and inefficient care processes. Therefore, CMS has also developed advanced alternative payment models (APMs) that hold providers financially accountable for the quality and cost of care delivered to patients. These APMs include accountable care organizations (ACOs), episode-based payment models, Comprehensive Primary Care models, and other arrangements. Beyond committing to tying 90% of traditional Medicare fee-for-service payments to quality, CMS also sought to have at least half of payments flowing through APMs by 2018. According to the latest available data, while CMS has successfully tied 90% of payments to value, only about 40% flowed through APMs.

However, the transition to a health care system that rewards value has slowed in recent years, and the promise of curtailing health care spending while also improving quality has remained elusive.

Where We Are Now: Efficacy of Value-Based Payment and Health Disparities

The past decade of experimentation with APMs has had successes and failures. But it has provided proof-of-concept that if designed well, APMs are capable of driving cost savings and value improvements. There have been notable successes with the more advanced models that shift greater accountability onto providers, particularly those that do so over longer time horizons. Critics of value-based payment argue the movement is largely a disappointment, with only a small number reducing costs for Medicare, and many generating substantial losses. Observers are right to note that the current APM landscape includes many underperforming models, which have failed to produce the desired practice transformation. However, a decade of middling results does not imply that CMS should abandon value-based payment. The decade of experimentation has produced the necessary knowledge to design and implement APMs to transform health care delivery. We must build upon the most successful APMs and phase out those that have not delivered on their promise.

Conclusion

In the decade since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the health care system has reached a series of important milestones in its shift to paying for value. Led by CMS, a growing share of payers have moved away from outmoded fee-for-service payment. More providers than ever before are engaged in some form of quality-linked payment, and a smaller cadre have begun experimenting with advanced forms of population-based payment and large-scale practice transformation.

We now need a more focused, whole-of-government push toward a high-quality, efficient system. The persistence of health disparities, uneven quality, and continued rise of health care costs, and the concomitant threat to federal and state budgets, requires renewed focus on spreading the adoption of advanced forms of alternative payment models. These models must move from experimentation to an entrenched, nationwide standard.

The past decade of experimentation shows that alternative payment models as currently implemented are not driving large-scale, systemic change. But a careful study of the lessons from both successful and underperforming models suggests that properly designed APMs can yield improvements in value through cost reductions and quality improvements. The next decade must put those lessons into practice by engaging late adopters, ramping up already adopted and successful APMs, driving payment and practice transformation in commercial insurance, and integrating equity front and center in value-based payment. The goal of a sustainable health care system that pays for better quality, equity, and efficiency is both audacious and fully achievable.

https://ldi.upenn.edu…

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Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy

MedPAC, March 2021

One way traditional FFS Medicare has attempted to slow the growth in its spending is through alternative payment models (APMs). APMs are intended to give providers financial incentives to deliver care efficiently, to counteract FFS payment systems’ incentives to maximize the volume of services provided.

Most APMs are piloted in different parts of the country for three to six years at a time. Models are evaluated by researchers, and CMS uses findings from these evaluations to develop successor APMs that build on lessons learned. CMS is allowed to make permanent any APMs that save Medicare money while maintaining quality or that improve quality without increasing spending. Evidence analyzing the impact of APMs is still emerging, and APM impacts, even when positive, have been modest. Some types of APMs (population-based models and episode-based payment models for some conditions) have performed better than others. Despite modest effects to date, the Commission believes APMs hold great promise and is currently exploring potential improvements to APMs that could increase their success rate.

MedPAC report to Congress – over 500 pages:
http://www.medpac.gov…

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D.

For about a decade now we’ve been fixated on paying for value instead of volume. But what does that mean? All health care has “volume” – time, effort and resources devoted to health care. Volume varies tremendously depending on the clinical situation. Think of management of a common cold as opposed to management of severe multiple injuries in an accident. Can payment schemes ignore volume? Of course not. Volume is built into the problem.

What about value? It seems to be defined as cost reductions and quality improvements. When you are trying to provide optimal care, is cost what you are really looking at? Just as you are not looking at increased volume to increase costs, you are also not looking at reduced volume to reduce costs. You are looking at what is best for the patient. And quality? Quality is important. Striving for excellence in care is always a goal. But the few quality measures used today hardly reflect overall excellence in care. They represent a minuscule portion of care delivered and, at that, they are crafted in a manner that they can easily be gamed.

Yet “value instead volume” has led to accountable care organizations (ACOs) and other alternative payment models (APMs), and has led to complexity in medical record systems that is contributing to burnout of health professionals. Experimentation over the past decade has led to conclusions such as “the promise of curtailing health care spending while also improving quality has remained elusive” (Penn), or “APM impacts, even when positive, have been modest” (MedPAC). To date, this experimentation has been largely a failure.

The policy community is claiming that we can learn from the experiments of the past decade and that we must move forward with these models by not only pulling providers towards APMs but also pushing them away from fee-for-service payment (Penn). Do not pay them for the services they provide, but pay them for “value,” even if there is no satisfactory model of measuring value, whatever it is.

They express confidence that, with concerted effort over the next decade, we can meet the “audacious” goal of “a sustainable health care system” (Penn) since “APMs hold great promise” (MedPAC). No, they don’t. The goal is not to satisfy smug policy wonks, but rather it is to provide the health care needs of patients. Enacting and implementing a single payer, improved Medicare for All would move us a lot closer to “value” as we might define it, no matter the volume of cases we are presented with.

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By Matthew DeCamp, M.D., Ph.D., Lois Snyder Sulmasy, J.D., for the American College of Physicians Ethics, Professionalism and Human Rights Committee
Annals of Internal Medicine, March 16, 2021

Abstract

The environment in which physicians practice and patients receive care continues to change. Increasing employment of physicians, changing practice models, new regulatory requirements, and market dynamics all affect medical practice; some changes may also place greater emphasis on the business of medicine. Fundamental ethical principles and professional values about the patient–physician relationship, the primacy of patient welfare over self-interest, and the role of medicine as a moral community and learned profession need to be applied to the changing environment, and physicians must consider the effect the practice environment has on their ethical and professional responsibilities. Recognizing that all health care delivery arrangements come with advantages, disadvantages, and salient questions for ethics and professionalism, this American College of Physicians policy paper examines the ethical implications of issues that are particularly relevant today, including incentives in the shift to value-based care, physician contract clauses that affect care, private equity ownership, clinical priority setting, and physician leadership. Physicians should take the lead in helping to ensure that relationships and practices are structured to explicitly recognize and support the commitments of the physician and the profession of medicine to patients and patient care.

Business Practices, Employment, and Ethics: Recommendations

• ACP Recommendation 1: Ethics and professionalism must be emphasized and explicitly addressed in the implementation of business practices and employment relationships, including in the face of external motivators for clinicians, such as financial incentives.
• ACP Recommendation 2: Contract provisions affecting practice should align with the ethical commitments of physicians and be subject to negotiation that recognizes that alignment.
• ACP Recommendation 3: Confidentiality clauses should not interfere with patient well-being, respectful professional relations, or the individual and collective responsibility of physicians to promote patient best interests, community health, and quality improvement.
• ACP Recommendation 4: Physicians should consider carefully whether to sign an employment contract that permits termination without cause. Provisions related to termination should be reciprocal and time-limited.
• ACP Recommendation 5: The net value of private equity investment in physician practices for patients, physicians, and medicine is unclear. Systematic studies of this trend on patients, medicine, and society are needed.
• ACP Recommendation 6: Organizations and employers should recognize and appropriately value time for patient–physician encounters and engage patients and physicians in priority setting across all aspects of health care.

Conclusion

Business practices can challenge the ethics and professionalism of individual physicians and the collective responsibility of the medical profession to patients. The social mission of institutions can be challenged as well.

Physicians, whether in training, newly graduated, or with decades of experience, must be aware of the effect business practices, employment terms, and contracts can have on ethics and professionalism. National organizations, such as the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, and medical schools and residency programs should develop strategies for and educational materials on these issues. Because details matter, physicians must be prepared to ask questions about arrangements and feel empowered to advocate for practices that promote patient health and the patient–physician relationship. If a practice or policy harms or has the potential to harm patient care, the physician should speak out and “resist and even refuse to carry it out”.

It is also important for physicians to inform patients when these arrangements affect practice. Doing so preserves trust in the patient–physician relationship and helps make patients and society more aware of forces shaping the practice of medicine. Physicians should be actively involved as a major force.

The practice of medicine must be defined by the ethics of medicine. Efficiency and productivity are important but secondary to serving the needs of patients. Intrinsic motivations of service, professionalism, and clinical integrity must guide physicians and be respected by institutions and health systems. Trust in systems, individual clinicians, and the patient–physician relationship demands no less.

The challenges to care and medical practice during and after the COVID-19 pandemic underscore the need to reemphasize the ethical foundation of medicine. The commitment to ethics in the response of clinicians to COVID-19 has helped sustain the profession and society in the emergency. Some see in COVID-19 an important “lesson that the system can be reset” to better serve both patients and clinicians. Looking anew at the environment in which care is delivered, physicians should lead in ensuring that business relationships explicitly recognize and support the fundamental and timeless commitments of physicians and medicine to patients.

https://www.acpjournals.org…

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D.

The excerpts posted here for this policy paper include the abstract, the recommendations, and the conclusion. But they do not begin to adequately address today’s ethics and professionalism considering the dramatic changes taking place in medicine, especially in the business of medicine. The American College of Physicians has made the full policy paper available for free at the link above, and it should be read in its entirety.

The policy paper is still inadequate because it fails to reject some of the approaches that fall more under the heading of business rather than medicine, although they do stress the primacy of the patient and the patient-physician relationship. As you read the paper, you will be able to identify some of the areas for which they suggest ethical principles that should be applied, but some of these are structural issues that should be rejected.

You’ve heard it many times before and we’ll say it once again, we need to begin with a comprehensive restructuring of our health care financing system by enacting and implementing a model that automatically has ethical principles built in. Of course, that model is a single payer, improved Medicare for All national health program. It’s a system built around the patient, and that’s where you want to begin. If we finally get the model right, the ethics will follow.

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By David Engel, J.D., Gary Azorsky, J.D., Jeanne Markey, J.D., and Ray Sarola, J.D.
MedPage Today, March 13, 2021

Can a patient have and not have diabetes at the same time? According to private insurers participating in the Medicare Advantage program, the answer is yes. The data architecture of Medicare Advantage is vulnerable to fraud perpetrated by the Medicare Advantage Organizations (MAOs) who administer Medicare Advantage plans. These MAOs stand to collect inflated profits if they determine that their beneficiaries have complicating diagnoses for certain purposes but not for others.

Why does it matter?

The stakes for the new administration – and the country as a whole – are enormous. Over 23 million Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans, for whom the federal government paid out $264 billion in 2019 alone. It is increasingly clear that these public funds are vulnerable to fraud. The HHS Office of Inspector General recently reported that in just one year $2.6 billion was paid to MAOs based on their reports of patient diagnoses that lacked supporting data from providers. It is widely anticipated that investigations and prosecutions of corporate fraud will increase under the Biden administration, and given the dollars at issue and the critical importance of our national healthcare system, fraud in the Medicare Advantage program should be a particular focus of this renewed enforcement effort.

Why is the program so vulnerable to fraud?

To illustrate Medicare Advantage’s vulnerability to fraud, consider how it relies upon two independent data systems to pay for a beneficiary’s inpatient hospital care.

The first system determines the amounts MAOs pay hospitals. This system uses the same MS-DRG prospective payment methodology as traditional Medicare, under which payment for each episode of care is a fixed fee. This fee is based on the procedures performed and the patient’s current diagnoses as reported by the hospital to the MAO.

The second system determines the capitated amount the government pays the MAO for insuring all of a beneficiary’s covered care during the relevant period. The government estimates the cost of this care by calculating a Risk Adjustment Factor (RAF) for each beneficiary. The RAF is based on information regarding each beneficiary’s demographic information and current diagnoses as reported to the government by the patient’s MAO. The higher the RAF, the greater the payment the MAO will receive for that beneficiary.

In the first system, the data flow is between the hospital and the MAO. In the second, it is between the MAO and the government. The problem arises because the government does not have real-time access to hospital claims data in the first system, and hospitals do not have access to the MAO’s reports to the government in the second system.

Our diabetes example demonstrates the consequences of this lack of integration and transparency, particularly in the context of secondary diagnoses. For instance, suppose that a Medicare Advantage member with type 2 diabetes is admitted for surgery, and the hospital later codes this secondary diagnosis on its bill to the MAO. This diagnosis may move the episode of care into a more heavily weighted DRG, which can increase by thousands of dollars the amount the MAO must pay the hospital. These increased payments incentivize MAOs to challenge the propriety of such secondary diagnoses by contending that they are inactive conditions or otherwise irrelevant to the episode of care. Some MAOs have initiated programs to routinely delete certain diagnoses in order to downgrade DRGs and reduce payments to hospitals.

Whether a patient has type 2 diabetes is also an important datum in the Medicare Advantage risk adjustment system. A beneficiary with a current diabetes diagnosis will receive a higher RAF score, and the government will pay the MAO more to insure that beneficiary. While the MAO has an incentive to delete this secondary diagnosis to reduce its payment to the hospital, it can increase its own payments from the government by including this diagnosis in the risk adjustment reports it transmits to the government. If the MAO does not synchronize its provider payment determinations with its risk adjustment reports, our patient will both have and not have diabetes at once. The MAO will improperly profit by being paid to insure a diabetic patient while not paying a hospital to care for one.

How can we prevent this fraud?

It is unfortunate that the current Medicare Advantage data reporting systems are vulnerable to this type of fraud and do not have real-time policing mechanisms. MAOs are likely to continue to take advantage of a system that lets them act as though a patient is less sick when paying for their care, and more sick when seeking money from the government to cover that same patient. The most effective tool to deter and remedy this type of fraud is the federal False Claims Act, which imposes treble damages and significant monetary penalties on companies that defraud the government. Prosecuting those who engage in this fraud under the False Claims Act, including through cases brought by whistleblowers, is the most effective remedy and deterrent.

David Engel, J.D., is a health care attorney admitted to the New York Bar. Gary Azorsky, J.D., Jeanne Markey, J.D., and Ray Sarola, J.D., are members of the Whistleblower/False Claims Act practice group at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll.

https://www.medpagetoday.com…

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D.

It is not clear that the multitude of our Quote of the Day messages on the problems with the private Medicare Advantage plans have been getting through. Today’s message gets right to the point. The attorney authors of this article say it like it is: This is fraud!

The Medicare Advantage plans are run by crooks. They use slick marketing to sell these plans to new arrivals in the Medicare program. They add nominal teaser benefits, plus they add the important benefit of providing catastrophic coverage. Although the purchasers of these plans may realize that they have limited networks, they are usually satisfied if their own primary care physician is on the list (not realizing that they may later develop problems that are best handled by physicians and facilities that are out of network). The more expensive patients soon learn that narrow networks and prior authorization requirements serve as significant barriers to the care that they need. The Medicare Advantage plans have developed a well earned reputation that the healthy go in and the sick come out. By outside appearances, the system does seem to work well enough for people that they have managed to entice into their programs, but those are individuals who have not discovered the problems lurking ahead.

This article reveals the heart of the matter. The nation’s largest insurers are using these private Medicare Advantage plans to post record profits on the stock exchange. These excess profits are obtained by cheating the taxpayers who are paying for the Medicare program. Congress and the various administrations have been complicit since each year they authorize financing gimmicks that game the system, while neglecting much needed revisions to the traditional Medicare program – revisions such as reducing out-of-pocket expenses and establishing a reasonable cap on catastrophic losses.

The wake-up call that we really need is for the public to realize what crooks these are and that it is time to get rid of them and to upgrade the traditional Medicare program so it works well for all of us – a single payer, improved Medicare for All. That won’t eliminate all abuses, but it would establish a financing framework that works much better for the patients and the taxpayers.

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Where is the outcry among Democratic politicians to reverse completely the corporate takeover of Medicare?

By Ralph Nader

Do you remember the promises made by the Democratic Party’s presidential and Congressional candidates on universal health insurance? You can forget their pledges and somber convictions now that your votes put the Democrats in charge of the House and the Senate. The Democrats’ leaders are abandoning their promises and retreating into a cowardly corporatist future.

Here is the present scene. Leading Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have decided to spend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize the giant health insurance companies like Aetna and United Healthcare to “cover recently laid-off workers and those who purchase their own coverage,” as The New York Times reported. There are no price restraints on the gouging insurance premiums or loophole-ridden policies. That is why giant corporate socialist insurers love the “American Rescue Plan,” which gives them socialist cash on the barrelhead. The law lets insurers decide how and whether they pay healthcare bills with co-pays, deductibles, or grant waivers. All these anti-consumer details are buried in the endless and inscrutable fine print.

Whatever happened to the Democrats’ (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pramila Jayapal, etc.) demand for single-payer – everybody in, nobody out – with free choice of doctors and hospitals instead of the existing cruel, and profiteering industry for which enough is never enough? Senator Sanders often mentioned a Yale study, published on February 15, 2020, that found:

“Although health care expenditure per capita is higher in the USA than in any other country, more than 37 million Americans do not have health insurance, and 41 million more have inadequate access to care. Efforts are ongoing to repeal the Affordable Care Act which would exacerbate health-care inequities. By contrast, a universal system, such as that proposed in the Medicare for All Act, has the potential to transform the availability and efficiency of American health-care services. Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than $450 billion annually….” (See the study: Improving the Prognosis of Health Care in the USA, February 15, 2020).

Well, House Speaker Pelosi is discouraging House Democrats from supporting Representative Pramila Jayapal’s H.R. 1384, Medicare for All Act of 2019, the gold standard for single-payer. News reports indicate that Representative Jayapal (D-WA) and Representative. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) will reintroduce their Medicare for All bill next week. Speaker Pelosi is telling Democrats in the House to focus instead on the modest expansion of Obamacare with its corporate welfare, utter complexity and seriously inadequate coverage. Almost eighty million Americans are presently uninsured or underinsured – a level that will not be significantly reduced for deprived workers by tweaking Obamacare during the Covid-19 pandemic.

A modified Obamacare, with no price ceilings, will hardly reduce the tens of thousands of American deaths every year because people cannot afford health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time to prevent fatalities. The Yale study also found that: “ensuring health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68,000 lives and 1.73 million life-years every year compared with the status quo.” Tweaking Obamacare does little to stem the relentless surge in healthcare prices and profits in our country, which is unique for not placing billing ceilings on medical procedures and drugs. This “get whatever you can” behavior by the vendors is so uncontrolled that healthcare billing fraud and abuse is costing people one billion dollars A DAY! Malcolm Sparrow, who is an applied mathematician at Harvard, estimates medical billing fraud amounts to at least ten percent of all healthcare expenses each year.

Obamacare does nothing to limit the perverse incentives of a fee-for-service system that includes unnecessary operations, over-diagnosis, and over-prescribing all of which increase the risks of preventable casualties. A Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine peer-reviewed study in 2016 estimates that close to 5000 lives are lost weekly due to such “preventable problems” just in hospitals (see: Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S., May 3, 2016).

It gets worse. Year after year, the corporate Democrats, along with the Republicans, are facilitating expanding corporate takeovers of Medicare and Medicaid. The giant and widening attack on Medicare is called “Medicare Advantage,” which more accurately should be called “Medicare [Dis]advantage.” Our corporatized government, under both Parties, has been allowing deceptive promotional seductions of elderly people to take Medicare [Dis]advantage – now fully 40% of all Medicare beneficiaries – which is just a corporate insurance plan with multiple undisclosed tripwires.

Former President Trump worsened what he inherited from the Democrats in outsourcing Medicare. He launched something called “direct contracting” that, “could fully turn Medicare over to private health insurers” declared Diane Archer, former chair of Consumer Reports, in her article on March 8, 2021. Medicare Advantage premiums can be pricey. According to Kay Tillow, Executive Director of the Nurses Professional Organization, “The Medicare Advantage Plans are smiling all the way to the bank. In 2019 each Medicare Advantage beneficiary cost taxpayers $11,822 while those in original Medicare cost $10,813 each – that’s over $1,000 more and over 9% more per person for the for-profit insurers!”

Where is the outcry among Democratic politicians to reverse completely the corporate takeover of Medicare? Last year, many Democratic candidates pontificated about the need for single-payer health insurance, but now in Congress, we are scarcely hearing a peep about this vital human right. Their campaign rhetoric is just distant memory. Tragically, it is now harder than ever for the elderly to get out of Medicare [Dis]advantage and go back to traditional Medicare.

Millions of elderly people are deceived by televised marketing lies and slick brochures.  The hapless Federal Trade Commission (FTC) should investigate and end the deceptions. Congressional investigations and hearings are long overdue. As the authoritative Dr. Fred Hyde says about the so-called Medicare Advantage: “It’s not what you pay, it’s what you get.” That is, the corporate health plan works until they get sick, until “they want their doctor and their hospital.” Dr. Hyde was referring to the narrow networks where these companies park their beneficiaries.

More astonishing in this story of the rapacious corporate takeover of Medicare is that AARP promotes these flawed plans to their members, takes paid ads by big insurers in AARP publications, and derives income from this collaboration.

Imagine, over 50,000 SEIU retirees are automatically placed by their unions in these Medicare [Dis]advantage traps without first being allowed to choose traditional Medicare.

This whole sordid sabotage of the nineteen sixties Democrats’ dream, under President Lyndon Johnson, of taking the first step toward universal healthcare coverage for everyone, begs for more exposes. It begs for more clamor by the progressive Democrats in Congress who are strangely passive so far. I’m speaking of Representatives Jayapal, Raskin, Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and the receding “Squad,” as well as Senators Warren and Sanders. If we can’t expect these stalwarts to start the counterattack that will save lives, save trillions of dollars over the years, focus on prevention not just treatment, and diminish the anxiety, dread, and fear, that the citizens of Canada and other western nations do not experience because they are insured from birth on, who is left to defend the American people against the arrogant health insurance corporate barons?

I’m sending this column to these self-styled progressive Democrats along with a two-page specific critique of corporate Medicare from the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) website. PNHP’s membership counts over 15,000 pro-single-payer physicians. In a comment on the PNHP site, Don McCanne, M.D., says, “Remember, the mission of private, for-profit Medicare Advantage insurers is to make money, whereas the mission of our traditional Medicare program is to provide health care. We are supporting a program that deferentially caters to the private insurers and their interests when we should be supporting a program that is designed to take care of patients. Those being deceived by the private Medicare Advantage marketing materials really do not realize the bad deal they may be getting until they face the private insurer barriers to needed care. Silver Sneakers won’t take care of that.” (See: https://pnhp.org/news/russell-mokhiber-explains-why-private-medicare-advantage-plans-are-a-bad-deal/)

If you care about this issue, tell your Members of Congress it is time to pass Medicare for All represented by H.R. 1384.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of “The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future” (2012). His new book is, “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lies and Lawbreaking Betray All” (2020, co-authored with Mark Green).

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D.

Ralph Nader certainly seems to have a clear understanding of the issues regarding the corporate takeover of Medicare. Even those people over at PNHP and many others get the point as well. Just wish our president did.

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