It's days like today that I quite literally don't know where and how to begin. The healthcare situation involving our most vulnerable, America's elderly is on par with the catastrophe in Iraq. Like in Iraq, the American people are being fed a steady stream of lies and deceit about Medicare and the ultimate goal of the regime which is to privatize one of the finest government programs ever created.
So as you finalize you tax returns, let's take a look at where your hard-earned money is directed by the regime and how privatization works.
Our money goes to Halliburton. It goes to Blackwater. It goes to the friends and benefactors of Cheney/Bush.
It also goes to privatized and heavily taxpayer subsidized Medicare which is known as Medicare Advantage.
I read numerous health policy on-line magazines. Most are stomach-turning because studying them allows me to see inside the fetid intestines of our for-profit healthcare industry. Once you're acquainted with the enormous volume of literature on healthcare in the United States, it's impossible not to recognize that everything revolves around one imperative: maximizing shareholder profits.
But when it comes to Medicare, specifically Medicare Advantage, it's even worse. It's taxpayer funded corporate welfare.
This is from the U.S. department of Health and Human Services, it "describes" Medicare Advantage. Notice, if you will that these liars don't say that if you sign up for a Medicare Advantage Plan, you are putting your life into the murderous hands of a private for-profit health insurer. But you are.
Medicare Advantage Plans are health plan options that are part of the Medicare program. If you join one of these plans, you generally get all your Medicare-covered health care through that plan. This coverage can include prescription drug coverage. Medicare Advantage Plans include:
Medicare Health Maintenance Organization (HMOs)
Preferred Provider Organizations (PPO)
Private Fee-for-Service Plans
Medicare Special Needs Plans
When you join a Medicare Advantage Plan, you use the health insurance card that you get from the plan for your health care. In most of these plans, generally there are extra benefits and lower copayments than in the Original Medicare Plan. However, you may have to see doctors that belong to the plan or go to certain hospitals to get services.
To join a Medicare Advantage Plan, you must have Medicare Part A and Part B. You will have to pay your monthly Medicare Part B premium to Medicare. In addition, you might have to pay a monthly premium to your Medicare Advantage Plan for the extra benefits that they offer.
If you join a Medicare Advantage Plan, your Medigap policy won’t work. This means it won’t pay any deductibles, copayments, or other cost-sharing under your Medicare Health Plan. Therefore, you may want to drop your Medigap policy if you join a Medicare Advantage Plan. However, you have a legal right to keep the Medigap policy.
To compare Medicare Advantage Plans, go to the Medicare Options Compare.
http://www.medicare.gov/...
There are literally hundreds of magazines that cater to the healthcare industry. Are you surprised? Healthcare in the United States accounts for something like a 3 trillion annually.
There's a magazine called Managed Healthcare Executive. It's sub-head is For Decision Makers in Healthcare. Managed Heathcare Executive exists to enable health insurance CEOs and executives squeeze out higher profits, hence it has articles like this.
How to effectively manage Medicare enrollments
Most Medicare Advantage and Part D sponsors share a common goal: make Medicare a more profitable line of business. To help alleviate some of the challenges associated with enrollment practices, consider the following tips:
http://www.managedhealthcareexecutiv...
The Congressional Budget Office has reported that current reimbursement levels for Medicare Advantage are already about 12 percent higher than traditional Medicare. Bringing them in line with Medicare costs could save the federal government $160-billion over 10 years, the budget office said.
Okay, so much for the truth about Medicare Advantage.
How does Medicare and its privatization work in the real world? Not well, especially if you require brand name drugs. Brand name drugs are expensive and we know, every dollar the for-profit insurance industry spends on healthcare goes against what Wall Street demands, an ever increasing corporate bottom line.
This is from the heroic healthcare writers at the Los Angeles Times:
WASHINGTON — From the day the new Medicare drug plan was introduced, critics warned that it had a big loophole — the "doughnut hole" — a coverage gap that leaves some recipients with $3,000 in costs to pick up themselves.
The private sector was supposed to help. And last year, Sierra Health Services, an insurer based in Las Vegas, announced it would do so. In exchange for higher monthly premiums, Sierra offered comprehensive coverage of brand-name medications for patients who had to fill the cost gap.
But the Sierra Rx Plus plan lost $3 million in January, its first month of operation. Faced with that red ink, the company announced in late February that next year it would no longer offer a plan that covers brand-name drugs in the gap.
. . .Medicare's coverage gap was designed by a Republican-led Congress to help keep program costs down. After the first $2,400 in total drug costs, beneficiaries are responsible for the next $3,051 — the doughnut hole. Beyond that, the program pays 95%. Plugging the gap for all seniors could cost taxpayers as much as $450 billion over 10 years.
"It's not very likely to happen in this Congress," said Rep. Pete Stark (D-Fremont). "Closing the doughnut hole would be expensive unless you did a whole host of other things, such as having the government negotiate for the purchase of drugs. And the president would probably veto that."
http://www.latimes.com/...
Moving along right through the Medicare debacle. Remember AARP, they jumped in bed with the Republican liars and thugs who passed the Medicare Modernization Act in the middle of the night, under cover of darkness. They had to plunder the treasury and the American people in secrecy because the Medicare Modernization Act (Republicans did what they do best, slap a happy face on it), was nothing more than a complete giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry. Here's what AARP is advocating now.
AARP got religion.
WASHINGTON, March 6 PRNewswire-USNewswire -- Brand name prescription drug prices continue to rise at about twice the rate of inflation, according to the latest AARP Watchdog Report.
AARP's Watchdog Report found that ten of the brand name drugs it tracks increased at least four times the rate of general inflation during 2006. Ambien led the pack with a 29.7 percentage increase in manufacturer price, followed by Combivent at 18.3 percent and Atrovent Inhaler at 16.9 percent.
"The report highlights that drug prices continue to skyrocket," said David Sloane, Senior Managing Director, Government Relations & Advocacy. "Over time escalating drug prices will make Medicare drug plans unaffordable for older Americans. One way to address high drug prices is to take full advantage of Medicare's bargaining power and allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices."
Bob Elliott, a 75-year-old retiree from Kentucky, enrolled in a Medicare drug plan in 2006 after losing retiree prescription drug coverage from his former employer. He takes six prescriptions daily and by July 2006 reached the coverage gap, also known as the "donut hole" at which time he began paying full price for his medications. Only two of his medications are available in a generic version. "It was real sticker shock," said Elliot. "I went from paying a co-payment to full price. My out-of pocket expenses on drugs alone in six months reached $2,000. Prescription drug prices are too high and hit older Americans' wallets the hardest." As brand name drug prices continue to rise more and more Americans can expect a similar fate.
AARP strongly supports several legislative measures to put downward pressure on prescription drug prices. Initiatives AARP support: include urging Congress to act this year to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices; legalizing the safe importation of prescription drugs from abroad; and permitting generic versions of biologic drugs to be brought to market. "We need to send a loud and clear message to the pharmaceutical industry that Americans cannot afford to continue to pay the highest prices for prescription drugs in the world," continued Sloane.
http://www.drugnewswire.com/...
By the way, you don't have to believe nyceve about the corruption involved in passing the MMA legislation. Read the transcript from 60 Minutes.
The unorthodox roll call on one of the most expensive bills ever placed before the House of Representatives began in the middle of the night, long after most people in Washington had switched off C-SPAN and gone to sleep.
The only witnesses were congressional staffers, hundreds of lobbyists, and U.S. Representatives like Dan Burton, R-Ind., and Walter Jones, R-N.C.
"The pharmaceutical lobbyists wrote the bill," says Jones. "The bill was over 1,000 pages. And it got to the members of the House that morning, and we voted for it at about 3 a.m. in the morning."
Why did the vote finally take place at 3 a.m.?
"Well, I think a lot of the shenanigans that were going on that night, they didn't want on national television in primetime," according to Burton.
"I've been in politics for 22 years," says Jones, "and it was the ugliest night I have ever seen in 22 years."
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
So what's the response of the regime to all this corruption and depravity? Here's Michael Leavitt, the secretary of HHS in his own sick words:
Medicare: ‘No Need for Negotiations’
Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Acting Director Leslie Norwalk held a briefing for reporters this morning in which they said the current program — in which private drug plans compete for beneficiaries — is working and has held down the cost of medicines and prescriptions.
"The idea of the government negotiating drug prices really isn’t about the government negotiating drug prices. It’s a surrogate for a much large issue, which is really government-run health care," Leavitt said.
http://www.statesman.com/...
Lest you have any remaining doubt about what's going on here, I'll leave you with this gem from the New York Times and a money quote from a Citibank analyst.
Humana Profit More Than Doubles, Aided by Medicare Gains
Humana, which has staked its future on federally financed benefits, has about 3.5 million people in its Medicare drug benefit plans and a further million in a program called Medicare Advantage, which also manages doctor visits and hospital stays.
Premiums for the Advantage program almost doubled in the quarter, to $2.3 billion, as the company, based in Louisville, Ky., entered more geographic areas.
Profit beat the 88-cent average estimate of 12 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Humana raised its earnings outlook to $4 to $4.20 a share for 2007, from a forecast of $3.90 to $4.10 in October.
Humana, which derives about 70 percent of its revenue from government sources, is more exposed to changes in government reimbursement rates than its competitors.
That makes the stock "one of the best ways to invest in the expansion and privatization of Medicare," said Charles Boorady, a Citigroup analyst in New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Enjoy the weekend. And as you send in your taxes, remember this diary and how your money is being squandered.