I look at things this way, leopards don't change their spots very often and this week Obama nominated Andy Slavitt as CMS director and of course he needs a Senate Confirmation. I think it's important to look back being he was a banker who's very talented in creating financial models and just moved over to healthcare to do it. He's made a lot of money. In addition he's a graduate of the McKinsey CEO school.
What's really interesting and again shows how rigged the news is today is nobody seems to be mentioning he's the Ingenix guy that everyone sued when Cuomo found him short paying doctors and patients for 15 years...AMA sued him and got a settlement out of United. This is an Algo Guy who knows how to work the numbers and make money.
We also should take a look at who's running HHS these days as Burwell was a former director for Bob Rubin, former Goldman Sachs executive and US Treasury Secetary who promptly took a board job at Citibank when he left the White House service. Most around the web in the banking business feel Rubin should be in jail for his huge decisions made during the Clinton era and beyond. At any rate, we have the six degress of Bob Rubin running HHS. Today Bob Rubin (at the Milken annual meeting) blamed Facebook for all the polarization in the US..right.
Soon after Burwell took office at HHS she prompty hired a Citi lawyer to her staff as well. Of late we just get blessed with her non ending selfies on Twitter to include one with a bicycle helmet on, 3 days after Kerry broke his leg on a bike. She does a lot of selfies and canned tweets by all means. A little of this background was mentioned so you can understand why she hired the Algo Man, Slavitt who knows how to work financial and health data for profit. He did it for years. In case you want to look back, here's one post on the AMA lawsuit to where New York governor Cuomo, then AG, took him out over short paying MDs and patients by using low balling algorithmic formulas. It didn't stop there either.
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It was doing so well making money for United that Ingenix (and Andy) licensed the software to the other big insurers too, who ended up being sued, but they all wanted these magical lowball algorithms for bigger profits. Here's one example and there were many more.
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Even Safeco filed suit and sued Ingenix (and Andy) over their skimping on medical payments.
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What's really interesting too is how the news rigs things as we know Andy Slavitt was also CEO of QSSI, the United subsidiary that did all the exchanges as well as Healthcare.Gov. It was a good dupe by United to play on the public not being aware of his clouded past and now he turns into a hero. In addition, the Ingenx name was changed to Optum as we know it now as it was so tarnished over the tons of lawsuits. I could be wrong but I don't think Ingenix won any of them either. Don't feel bad though as Congess is duped just as well and doesn't look back on the more serious Ingenix and law breaking issues. Remember Slavitt lives not too far in Minnesota from former Untied CEO Bill McGuire who was ousted on criminal charges by the DOJ for a huge derivatives settlement and now with all the money he has, McGuire is financing a pro soccer team in Minnesota, so those millions he paid back didn't hurt him at all. The team by the way is called "United" so get that.
Anyway back on track here this is what you are looking at, a former banker using sophisticated algorithms to push more the expense over to those on Medicare. It's what he did at United/Ingenix. One of those reports came out and said CMS should aggressively manage senior care.
HHS and Ingenix (now Optum) have been bed partners for quite a while as this back link kind of shows. This is just one example of a few Ingenix projects HHS seemed to always be featuring.
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Express Scripts uses Igenix algorithms to "predict" your medication adherence scores and of course these scores are sold to insurers to help determine your risk and what your premiums policies will be.
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Now let's move up current day and see how discriminating these "secret" scores are and the metrics used. You can read through and see that what is mentioned has nothing to do with taking meds and people are scores on things they can't change with proprietary methods that nobody can replicate for accuracy, but United, Optum and of course Express Scripts make a lot of money selling these scores, the basis for all of this were some Ingenix/Optum algorithms.
FICO medication adherence is along the same lines. You can't ever see these and they are different from "monitoring" scores as they are predictors only and probably a lot of the data is flawed. It will make you mad to look at it, but even I myself am on a list of known "blood thinner users" that is sold and I've never been prescribed or filled a prescription for any in my life and it gets sold over and over and I don't know who they are to fix it. So garbage like that shows up about me as a "risk".
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So this is the person President Obama has nominated to run Medicare/CMS and it's pretty scary. I say to urge your Senator to say NO on confirmation. I have a few former CMS employees that write to me and say the same thing. They worked with some of the United mentored CMS models over the years and they know.
You can see how banking and finance has now taken over Healthcare and it's not about your care but rather about money and of course selling your data for profit. Just Walgreens and CVS alone make a couple billion each selling our personal data each year, so lay off the rewards cards if you want a little privacy as that all gets attached to prescription data from there stores as well so they can know everything they can about your behavior. Use cash as well when you can. MasterCard and Visa make billions selling your credit card data and if you want a reference on how that works..here's one..company called Argus buys consumer credit card data, runs analytics and again "scores" you and sell that score to banks and insurers.
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Again, this is what Obama has nominated to run CMS and Slavitt is in office on a temporary basis doing this job on a limited basis until confirmed, and then watch out. This is the reals scary world of math models and algorithms that you can't see that get your money and deny access. Operation Perception Deception is in full swing in the US...and I wrote a post about that as well and how current day news rigging, s 60% of what you read is written by bots has an impact. It's so bad that so many of us at times can't tell the difference between real grass root campaigns and the fake ones and both are out there.
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You might want to think about contacting your Senator on this one as he's an Algo Man that does everything by the number, not by the person at all.