MA is so appealing to the health-care industry that more not-for-profit providers are taking advantage of the profits available to them. Our TV news programs now come with commercials from the likes of hospitals and Blue Cross Blue Shield plans touting their own MA plans.
It has long been the aim of conservatives to privatize Medicare or convert it into a "premium support" program. The government would provide the Medicare beneficiary with the equivalent of a voucher - the premium support - a defined amount of funds that would be combined with the beneficiary's own funds to purchase a plan from a market of private MA plans. This would convert Medicare from the traditional defined-benefit health program into a defined contribution. The government would limit its health-care spending to the defined contribution while passing the risk of increasing health-care costs onto the beneficiaries, to you the consumer.
We are already largely there. Currently, we are observing employer- and union-sponsored plans being moved into the MA market, funded through defined-contribution Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRAs), shifting more of the cost of health care to workers while relieving the very wealthy of their moral obligation to return some of their excess wealth.
We have watched the private insurance industry take over significant portions of health-care delivery; let us prevent them from taking over our public health insurance too. The essential virtue of Medicare is that it is an entitlement that cannot be bought. It is very clear that the advantage in MA is to the insurance industry and Wall Street. The Medicare for All legislation supported by Sen. Sanders and Congresswoman Jayapal may be the only way we have to preserve traditional Medicare.
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