Republicans Are Planning to Totally Privatize Medicare -- And Fast

This is the best summary I could come up with:

If Republicans win the presidential race this year, the push to fully privatize Medicare, the government health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities, will only intensify.

Philip Verhoef, president of the single-payer advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program, tells Rolling Stone it would be “disastrous” to make Medicare Advantage the default enrollment option.

As The New York Times reported in 2018, during Medicare’s open enrollment period, the Trump administration emailed messages to millions of beneficiaries touting the private plans.

Trump’s administration also helped make Medicare Advantage more attractive by expanding the range of perks the plans can offer to enrollees, allowing them to add benefits such as transportation to doctors’ offices and meal delivery.

Medicare Advantage plans, he says, are “tasked with managing your care, and telling you what you can and can’t do, and what is and is not covered — that is the opposite of putting beneficiaries in control of how they spend their dollars.”

But the financial incentive to deny care is baked into the Medicare Advantage model: The private plans are given a fixed amount of money every month to provide coverage for each enrollee; paying out fewer dollars means extra profit.

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4 comments

and as the boomers drop dead in droves because they can't afford their meds every last one will blame the dems.
- What? No, the Republicans will have a sunset phase that keeps the boomers happy. Every other generation will be fucked with perpetual work because that's the only way to afford healthcare.
have BEEN planning...
This is the best summary I could come up with:
If Republicans win the presidential race this year, the push to fully privatize Medicare, the government health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities, will only intensify.
Philip Verhoef, president of the single-payer advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program, tells Rolling Stone it would be “disastrous” to make Medicare Advantage the default enrollment option.
As The New York Times reported in 2018, during Medicare’s open enrollment period, the Trump administration emailed messages to millions of beneficiaries touting the private plans.
Trump’s administration also helped make Medicare Advantage more attractive by expanding the range of perks the plans can offer to enrollees, allowing them to add benefits such as transportation to doctors’ offices and meal delivery.
Medicare Advantage plans, he says, are “tasked with managing your care, and telling you what you can and can’t do, and what is and is not covered — that is the opposite of putting beneficiaries in control of how they spend their dollars.”
But the financial incentive to deny care is baked into the Medicare Advantage model: The private plans are given a fixed amount of money every month to provide coverage for each enrollee; paying out fewer dollars means extra profit.
The original article contains 1,164 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 83%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!