Build The Enhanced Medicare for All Infrastructure Now

Traditional Medicare was created in 1965 as a public good to provide a national health care system for seniors and the disabled in the United States and has proven to be our most efficient and effective public health care program with administrative costs accounting for only 2-3% of Medicare spending. The federal government has created various for-profit privatized health care programs within Medicare including Medicare Part D (prescription drugs), MediGap, and Medicare Advantage which is permitted to take up to 15% of every Medicare dollar for administration and profits for managing Medicare claims. But it gets worse. The Trump administration doubled down on privatizing Medicare through the Direct Contracting Pilot, rebranded under the Biden Administration as ACO-REACH, which allows private equity firms and Wall Street companies to take up to 40% of every Medicare dollar for administration and profits for managing Medicare claims. Recent investigations from the Inspector General’s Office at HHS, academic researchers, and investigative journalists, have uncovered wide-ranging fraudulent practices, like upcoding, delaying, and denying claims by insurers and other private businesses managing Medicare claims accounting for defrauding the Medicare Trust Fund and Medicare beneficiaries of between $ 12 and $ 24 billion in the year 2020 alone. Insurers and Wall Street are fiercely lobbying to gain a larger share of the soon-to-be $1.6 trillion of annual Medicare spending by further privatizing Medicare turning it into a profit center, at a time when Medicare beneficiaries are among the most vulnerable populations served in health care, and need more, not fewer benefits. That’s it. I want you to use the money that is available to save as specified in the Dec 2021 CBO report on Universal Health Care to end for-profit privatization of Medicare, including ACO-REACH and IMPLEMENT ENHANCED MEDICARE FOR ALL OF UWS. This is too important a part of our national infrastructure to leave to for profit entities whose interests are money and not our health. You can do this and I am counting on you.