MEDICARE ADVANTAGE FOR ALL?

On December 29, there appeared in the New York Times an article by Robert Pears titled: 'Medicare for All' Gains Favor with Democrats Looking ahead to 2020. The link, below, is worth looking at.

Medicare For All Finds Favor with Democrats

It begins with the familiar -- that increasingly, many Democrats are in favor of a government run single-payer program, But then it throws us a curve: "More than one-third of Medicare beneficiaries," it says, "are in Medicare Advantage plans, run not by the government but by private insurers."  So whether to allow younger Americans to enroll in such private plans is becoming "a hotly debated political question."

It's not hard to see why: Private insurance companies have been viewed by many progressives as the problem, not the solution. Progressives find it hard to believe that any entity making money by denying people care is going to change its stripes simply because their "new" product is termed "Medicare for All." For example,  Pears quotes a Democrat who says

“There are a lot of insurance companies and medical companies that are advocating for their own best interests, and those best interests are usually money, and not people’s health,” Representative-elect Deb Haaland, Democrat of New Mexico and a supporter of Medicare for all, said in an interview. “We need a national public health care system, which would be more affordable in the long run, and the outcomes might be better.”

But there are those -- even Democrats -- who believe that the Advantage plans ought to be considered. They ask, why take away from people the plan that they're satisfied with? And some go so far as to propose that Private Insurers run the whole thing:

“Medicare Advantage for all — that would be a much more politically feasible and a uniquely American spin on single payer,” said John K. Gorman, a former Medicare official who is a consultant to many insurers. “It would be Medicare paying all the bills, but it would be privately administered by heavily regulated plans that would effectively serve as utilities.”

"Uniquely American," eh? I suppose that if the large scale perpetrating of fraud in the name of profit is uniquely American -- which it well may be -- then this is one case where it would be best to stay away from what's uniquely American. For the truth is, as Don McCanne says,

It is clear that the private insurance industry is going to continue to do all it can to capture the present and future versions of the Medicare program, and they are doing it with the help not only of the conservatives but also the neoliberals who have infiltrated the progressive camp. We will likely be hearing much more about Medicare Advantage for All.

I fear that I may have met one of those "neoliberals" who has been newly elected to the House. But I didn't think of  him as a "neoliberal" (I hadn't heard the term before). I thought of  him simply as "Corporate." I hope he proves me wrong. But whatever he is, I have vowed to watch every vote he makes, and let him know that when he votes for the status quo, or anything like it, he's not representing me. 

I hope you'll do the same.

Dio






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CreditTom Brenner/The New York Times

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