Claims And Issues

MAKING PROFITS OFF OF MEDICARE ADVANTAGE SENIORS: THE NEW HEDGE!

The current administration is all in for Medicare Advantage.  It has a great track record in their eyes.  Medicare Advantage works great for overpayments, over $40 Billion more paid for services than delivered in just four years, 2013 to 2016!

How does Medicare Advantage do it?  Medicare Advantage plans plan on "additional diagnoses to justify receiving higher payments from the government."  Reed Abelson, Insurers Milk Medicare by Padding Bills, NEW YORK TIMES, Friday the 13th of December, 2019, p. B3 (published online under the headline, Federal Watchdog Questions Billions of Dollars Paid to Private Medicare Plans; as you know, the New York Times may charge for online access).  For every condition a Medicare patient presents, Medicare Advantage has very often input at least one more condition, whether or not the patient actually had it, says the Inspector General in a written report on Medicare Advantage.

In the eyes of the head of Medicare and Medicaid, Medicare Advantage is "what works in the Medicare program"!  Id.  She and her administration like Medicare Advantage so much that, because of the Medicare Advantage track record, last year in 2018 they paid $210 Billion to Medicare Advantage out of a total Medicare budget of $711 Billion.  That's just shy of 30% of the whole taxpayer-funded pot of money!

And what a return on investment of money!  Too bad there is not nearly as much return on medical care for seniors.

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TOO CRUEL EVEN FOR THEM?

McKinsey & Company, the international consulting firm for hire, has been hired by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  McKinsey has reportedly received "more than $20 million in consulting work for ICE[.]"  Ian MacDougall, Consulting Giant's Focus Was Making Deportations Faster and Cheaper / Agency Workers Saw Some Ideas As Too Harsh on Immigrants, NEW YORK TIMES, Wed., December 4, 2019, at p. A21 (New York Times may charge for online access to this report that it copublished along with ProPublica).  That's $20 Million out of our taxes, of course.

McKinsey focused on "detention savings opportunities" with respect to the apprehension and detention of immigrants by the current regime.  McKinsey proposed cutting spending on food, for example.  McKinsey also proposed cutting medical care.  Tasked with detention savings opportunities, McKinsey did not overlook "cutbacks in guard staffing," which was reportedly the place in the ICE budget where the greatest detention savings opportunities were made.  Ian MacDougall, Consulting Giant's Focus Was Making Deportations Faster and Cheaper / Agency Workers Saw Some Ideas As Too Harsh on Immigrants, NEW YORK TIMES, Wed., December 4, 2019, at p. A21 (New York Times may charge for online access to this report that it copublished along with ProPublica).

At least some of these cuts were too much even for people at ICE.  They pointed out that cutting back on food and medicine would affect the health of people held in ICE custody, and of course that is what has happened, according to other reports.

ICE agents also pointed out that many of McKinsey's cuts were illegal under existing regulations.  In response to these points, McKinsey's agents reported these ICE personnel to their ICE managers, saying that they stood in the way of the detention savings opportunities.

As for the regulations, people at McKinsey & Co. reportedly recommended doing away with at least some of the regulations in order to save on the costs of complying with them such as in providing food and medicine.  See Consulting Giant's Focus Was Making Deportations Faster and Cheaper / Agency Workers Saw Some Ideas As Too Harsh on Immigrants, NEW YORK TIMES, Wed., December 4, 2019, at p. A21 (New York Times may charge for online access to this report that it copublished along with ProPublica).

Another of McKinsey & Co.'s tasks was to help implement the current regime's task of adding 10,000 more agents.  Yet McKinsey recommended "cutbacks in guard staffing as the source of most cost savings."  Id.  What then were the agents to be used for, if not guarding immigrants in ICE detention?  The newspaper report does not say.

But we know how armed agents have been used that are not used for guarding immigrants in ICE detention.

  (Sandy Huffaker.AFP.Getty Images)

It would be foolish to expect that these agents will not be used that way again, perhaps even more so.  And it would be foolish not to realize that whenever they are used in those ways in the future, large corporations will be there to make a buck off it.

Please Read The Disclaimer. ©2019 Dennis J. Wall.  All Rights Reserved.

Download CI 12.04.19.

 

"MODERATES" HIGH WATER MARK. AFTER THIS, WE GET REAL.

There are lots of words written and spoken about "socialism," and in particular that so-called "moderates" should reject anything different from  the way things have been done in the past.

In a "moderates" column today, The New York Times quotes a person at a Virginia town hall meeting who asked her Congresswoman how she could justify a party (Democrats) who "are the party of death and taxes."  This is the kind of person held up by corporate media and others as a "moderate."  See Catie Edmonson and Emily Cochrane, The Moderates Take a Grilling Back at Home, The New York Times, Monday, February 25, 2019, p. A1, apprehensively retitled online with the headline, In Conservative Districts, Democrats Have to Answer for Party’s Left Wing (the newspaper may require a subscription to access it).

Parenthetically, the reporting on town hall meetings does not mention that only Democratic Members of Congress are holding town hall meetings.

This is the high water mark of so-called moderates.  Soon reports will return to the facts, like:

• The vast majority of people in the United States favor, and will vote for, "Medicare for all" and "single-payer health care." Health insurance companies, hospitals, and many doctors are against it.  They make a lot of money the way things are.
• Increasing taxes on the rich is also favored by the vast majority of Americans. Rich people are understandably against increasing their taxes, so they spend less money than they would pay in taxes to promote campaigns seeking to make other people believe that everybody's taxes will increase.  But only their taxes will increase for the most part, and most people seem to know that in spite of the campaigns paid for by the rich.
• The Green New Deal is a resolution, not a statute. When any resolution is adopted -- and the Green New Deal Resolution has not been adopted yet -- it is a talking point, the beginning of a discussion of ways to do things.  Again, most people in this country know that the environment of 2019 is going to be way worse in 10 or 20 years or longer in terms of human existence.  The vast majority of people think that whether this will continue to look like the same country in 10 or 20 years, and what we as a nation can and should do about it, is a worthy debate to have in the United States of America.  Oil barons will turn up their air conditioners when things get too hot; many of the rest of the people will continue to die from the heat.

So, this is the high water mark of "moderate" stories disguised as reporting.  Apparently, "moderates" are "moderates" only if they keep you in power.  Inevitably, reporting will return to the actual facts.  Reality will become reality in spite of what we read and hear now.

In the end, we do not have a real choice.

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