Biden Hikes Medicare Prices and Funnels Profits to Private Insurers

The largest-ever Medicare premium increase will pad the pockets of insurance executives who donated millions to the president’s election campaign.

In effect, the higher premium increases will subsidize the larger payments to — and profits for — private insurance corporations. This comes after Biden raked in roughly $47 million from health care industry executives during his 2020 campaign.

[scheerpost.com]

Well, it isn't like some of us in this group didn't warn you about it. I've posted numerous articles from Sludge over the years to indicate how both parties are in the pockets of these various healthcare corporations in which they constantly kick the can of socializing any sense of it down the road, only to flip the cost to you eventually while taking away. Well, here you go, another aspect to diminish the little rise you thought you were getting. Just like every aspect of our governing, those that come later will pay the price for someone else's false sense of security they put a belief in thinking they have. We just keep helping them put more into poverty and killing ourselves.

{The Biden administration announced on May 27 that due to “legal and operational hurdles,” Medicare recipients won’t see their premiums lowered this year, even though that rate was originally hiked last November in large part due to the projected costs of paying for a controversial Alzheimer’s drug that Medicare now says it generally will not cover.

The administration’s announcement comes as Biden officials move forward with a jolting 8.5 percent hike in payments made to private insurers operating Medicare Advantage plans next year.

But since taking office, Biden has expanded Medicare privatization by launching the involuntary ACO REACH program and through continuing to promote ever-increasing Medicare Advantage enrollment, and he has also raised premiums for Medicare recipients. The result, advocates say, is a situation in which Medicare’s sturdiness as an American institution is being steadily chipped away by well-connected corporate interests.}

And just like I warned in the run up to 2020, those of us not yet there to be punished for corporate benefits, would most likely end up helping to pay for your care also is now written in stone. As though we don't carry each other enough, the selfishness of last days went as futile to all of us. Crass? It has to be said, sadly. No one has a problem being crass towards me when they blissfully or ignorantly dismiss my time.

{“[The] privatization effort is reaching a frantic state, and Medicare Advantage is going to fail,” said Bill Kadereit, president of the American Retirees Education Foundation, due to the fact that the plans must pay profits to investors, unlike traditional Medicare plans. “The industry is hoping to cover up that failure with taxpayer subsidies that none of the taxpayers understand.”}

“Medicare Advantage insurers such as United Healthcare, Anthem, and CVS/Aetna are celebrating record profits in the tens of billions of dollars,” said Dr. Susan Rogers, president of Physicians for a National Healthcare Program. “Their business plan is simple: inflate their Medicare payments by making seniors look sicker than they are, and then pocket more of those Medicare dollars by ruthlessly denying seniors’ care.”

Meanwhile, more than 7 million seniors live in poverty and 7.3 million seniors are food insecure