Wendell Potter: Taking Advantage of Medicare Advantage
http://wendellpotter.com/2013/03/taking-advantage-of-medicare-advantage/
Facing government cuts to one of their cash cowsprivate Medicare planshealth insurance companies have launched a multi-pronged campaign, financed by the customer premiums, to persuade Congress to keep the cuts from going into effect next month.
The industrys big PR and lobbying group, Americas Health Insurance Plans, is deploying the tactics I described in Deadly Spin to scare seniors into believing that if the federal government stops overpaying insurers that offer Medicare Advantage plans (the private alternative to the traditional government-run Medicare program) seniors will pay more, get less and lose choices.
U.S. Health Insurers Launch TV War Over Medicare Advantage Cuts, read the headline of a Reuters story last week when AHIPs ads started running.
At issue is a 2.3 percent cut in payments to Medicare Advantage plans by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that are scheduled to go into effect on April 1.
The industrys campaign, of course, conveniently leaves out the fact that the government has been overpaying private insurers for years and that the cuts being proposed starting next month are part of a broader effort to put a stop to those overpayments.