PRIVATIZED MEDICARE CAN’T BE CONTROLLED

For decades, the private health insurers in America have, step by step, been privatizing Medicare, our public health insurance for all seniors, in order to make profits off this large public funding stream. Not surprisingly, they made dramatic new inroads during the Trump administration.

If we want to improve quality and control costs in our health care system for seniors, the privatization of Medicare must be stopped and rolled back. This and two other posts will summarize:

·      The history and background of Medicare and efforts to privatize it (a previous post),

·      The unsuccessful efforts to control the costs and improve the quality of the privatized Medicare Advantage plans (this post), and

·      What Medicare needs to do to fix what’s wrong, control runaway costs, and improve quality. [1]

Over the last 30 years, multiple efforts have attempted to control the costs of the privatized Medicare Advantage (MA) plans and to protect MA enrollees’ access to health care services (i.e., to reduce unwarranted denials of services or payments). However, the MA insurance companies always seem to find a way to dodge or get around new laws or regulations with these goals. Sometimes they block or weaken them before they’re ever enacted (e.g., through lobbying and campaign spending). Sometimes they alter their practices to skirt and undermine them.

When the privatized Medicare Advantage plans came into existence in 1985 (see my previous post for more details), reimbursement rates for MA plans were set at 95% of what seniors cost Medicare because the private insurers claimed they would be more efficient than the public Medicare program and would save Medicare money. However, MA insurance companies ended up spending 6% more per enrollee than Medicare, so they lobbied for and got higher and higher payments from Medicare. Instead of saving Medicare money, they cost it more and more. In 1997, the Clinton Administration’s Balanced Budget Act cut the excessive payments to MA plans and stopped the MA insurers from creaming-the-crop by enrolling healthier-than-average (i.e., less expensive) seniors. However, in 1999 and 2000, the MA companies got Congress to weaken these initiatives and then, under the pro-privatization George W. Bush Administration, they actually got increases in their payments from Medicare. The Obama Administration, as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, tried again to cut excessive payments to MA insurers. The ACA cut about $14 billion from MA plans’ excess costs by limiting them to only 1% more per enrollee than traditional, public Medicare costs. In response, an extensive and expensive ad and media campaign was initiated by the MA health insurers and Republicans claiming that Obama and the ACA were hurting seniors by cutting Medicare – a  campaign you may well remember. As a result, two years later, under tremendous pressure, the Obama Administration backed off and instead of cutting MA rates by 2.3% to move toward the targeted savings, it increased them by 3.3%

The private Medicare Advantage insurers have been successful time after time in overcoming Medicare’s efforts to control their excessive costs. They are so big and profitable that they can spend the money needed to stymie Medicare’s efforts by engaging in campaign spending, lobbying, and advertising. Any time there is an effort to cut their funding, they run a massive media and lobbying campaign saying that the government is trying to cut spending on Medicare. This scares seniors and legislators into opposing efforts to make MA more cost effective. [2]

The private Medicare Advantage insurers also find innovative (and sometimes fraudulent) ways to dodge cost controls and increase their revenue. A major one is claiming that their enrollees are sicker than they actually are because the payments they receive are greater for sicker seniors. Codes indicating the presence of diseases and negative health conditions are added to enrollees’ records even if the MA provider is providing no treatment or services for those ailments. It is estimated that in 2019 this “upcoding” (as it is referred to) cost Medicare $9 billion. [3]

Another way that the private Medicare Advantage insurers are gaming Medicare is through its five-star quality rating program that provides bonuses to MA plans with high ratings. The original purpose of the quality rating program was to help seniors pick high quality plans. When the program was initiated in 2009, 15% of plans got 4 or 4.5 stars and none got 5 stars. Today, 86% of plans are rated at 4 or 5 stars and, therefore, get about $6 billion in quality bonuses. Yet research finds that MA plan quality has not improved. The only thing that has improved is the MA insurers’ ability to game the system to get billions in bonus payments.

When the pro-privatization Trump Administration came into power, it created a program to fully privatize Medicare called Direct Contracting. Some experts have described it as Medicare Advantage on steroids. For example, one of the three Direct Contracting models would allow all seniors in designated geographic areas to be enrolled in a privatized Direct Contracting health care plan with no right to opt out. In addition, for the first time, Direct Contracting would allow investor-controlled firms – as opposed to firms controlled by health service providers – to provide Medicare services. This would turn over the delivery of Medicare’s health care services to private investors like hedge fund and private equity vulture capitalists whose only goal is to make money. [4]

In a recent 18-month period, private investors spent $50 billion buying Medicare Advantage insurers and these new Direct Contracting firms because of the opportunities they see to make large profits. These deals value the purchased firms at an average of $87,000 for each senior they estimate they will enroll. This is indicative of the level of profit investors believe can be generated from Medicare payments to these firms. [5]

My next post will describe what Medicare needs to do to fix what’s wrong, control runaway costs, and improve quality.

[1]     Caress, B., 1/24/22, “The dark history of Medicare privatization,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/health/dark-history-of-medicare-privatization/)

[2]     Caress, B., 1/24/22, see above

[3]     Gilfillan, R., & Berwick, D., 9/29/21, “Medicare Advantage, Direct Contracting, and the Medicare ‘money machine,’ Part 1: The risk-score game,” Health Affairs (https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/forefront.20210927.6239/full/)

[4]     Gilfillan, R., & Berwick, D., 9/30/21, “Medicare Advantage, Direct Contracting, and the Medicare ‘money machine,’ Part 2: Building on the ACO model,” Health Affairs (https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/forefront.20210928.795755/full/)

[5]     Gilfillan, R., & Berwick, D., 9/29/21, see above