[jml78]

The solution is disallow private insurance being the middle man between medicare and the patient.

What possible benefit to the patient is having a whole bureaucracy sit between the gov't insurance and the person in need of medical care? It only exists to make money off the backs of the people they are harming.

Now, if you don't know why people sign up for them, you don't understand what they are doing. My mom, like many others, was on a fixed income. If you sign up for a medicare advantage plan, they will do things like give you an extra $100 a month to you directly. Why would insurance be willing to PAY you? Because they make all their money billing medicare and denying you coverage.

18 billion in profits last year running a middle man between patients and medicare

[lotsofpulp]

> Why would insurance be willing to PAY you?

Why would the government introduce an intermediary in the first place?

[sizzle]

Network effects. They outsource all the medical billing and management to the big insurance racket companies. Protip: go with a PPO Medicare plan and medigap supplemental plan if you want your loved ones to see any specialists and go to any hospital. I switched mine off the HMO advantage plans to BCBS PPO cause HMO Medicare advantage plans deny everything by default fighting tooth and nail.

[lotsofpulp]

Wikipedia says the government introduced intermediaries to cut costs (i.e. create a scapegoat people can blame for denying claims or reducing payments to providers and not have the finger point at the government).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_Budget_Act_of_1997

> The act had a five-year savings goal and a ten-year savings goal following its enactment in 1997. The five-year savings goal was $116.4 billion which would be achieved by limiting growth rates in payments to hospitals and physicians under fee-for-service arrangements.[7]

>This plan also involved the change of the methods of payment made to rehabilitation hospitals, home health agencies, skilled nursing facilities, and outpatient service agencies as well as the reduction of payments to Medicare managed care plans and the slowing of growth rates of these same care plans.[7]

>The ten-year savings goal was $393.8 billion using the same savings methods as the five-year goal to achieve the savings in 2007.[7]

[MoreMoore]

Is it just me or does this sound like a terrible bill? I've gone through the page and it just sounds like it was trying to save money by making healthcare beneficiaries worse off.

[jml78]

I haven't researched how all these came to exist but I assume it is the typical conservative talking point about the free market being more efficient so why wouldn't we want this. It will save us all money. And no, I don't believe any of that BS.