John,

The New York Times just reported:¹

Private health insurance corporations are reaching into the Medicare trust fund and helping themselves to boatloads of our cash―and trying to bankrupt Medicare in the process!

When seniors retire, they have a choice between traditional Medicare, which guarantees health care, or insurance-run Medicare Advantage plans, which tempt seniors with lowered premiums and dental coverage, then turn around and deny necessary health coverage in pursuit of profit!

The New York Times’s report makes it clear that the problem is even worse than we thought―and we’ve already been calling out “killer plans” in Medicare Advantage.

Instead of shoveling more and more of our hard-earned money to the same corporate health insurers who are guilty of fraud, we need to invest in traditional Medicare, which just plain works. Let’s lower premiums and expand services to include dental, hearing, and vision plans so that corporate insurers can’t use those as bait for seniors who just want reliable care after a lifetime of work!

Social Security Works is demanding that our government protect you from the Medicare Advantage bad actors and cancel their contracts. If you’re with us, donate $7 today!

This is hardly the first time that Medicare Advantage has been in the spotlight for letting seniors down. Earlier this year, the Office of the Inspector General published a report² that found that Medicare Advantage plans deny an enrollee’s care one in seven times, on average. That’s the business model: Undercut traditional Medicare’s prices, then deny care to keep the insurer’s costs below the amount that our government pays them, no matter if the Medicare enrollee dies!

These privatized killer plans are spreading. A program that began under the Trump administration and continued under the Biden administration plucks unsuspecting people who avoided the Medicare Advantage trap and puts them on a private insurance plan without their knowledge or consent. This experiment in privatization, called REACH, is the last thing seniors need.

Instead of treating older Americans as guinea pigs, we should give them the guaranteed care that they’ve paid for with every paycheck!

Defend Medicare from private corporations by donating to Social Security Works today! Together, we’re going to STOP the privatization of Medicare!

Thanks,

Michael Phelan
Social Security Works

¹ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/upshot/medicare-advantage-fraud-allegations.html
² https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/OEI-09-18-00260.pdf