[whb07]

I talked to a startup at Pycon that was trying to grow under the Medicare Advantage program. I asked how this would help in reigning in costs to the tax payer, and she kept repeating “oh we will save money because we are given a max $ amount per patient, and so it’s in our benefit to save money”.

Well, that is true only for the startup. The dollars they save are the profits they make up to a max of 15%. But there are no long run incentives to overall reduce the tax bill per client as they will always ride close to that allotted amount set by Congress.

The startup representative took offense when I pointed out that at no point would they ever return money back to Medicare. That they would always consume every allotted dollar allowed by law.

Just another rent seeker by a different name.