Private Medicare Plans Cheating Americans.

According to a NY Times report "Medicare Audits Show Problems in Private Plans ": 

Tens of thousands of Medicare recipients have been victims of deceptive sales tactics and had claims improperly denied by private insurers that run the system’s huge new drug benefit program and offer other private insurance options encouraged by the Bush administration, a review of scores of federal audits has found.

The problems, described in 91 audit reports reviewed by The New York Times, include the improper termination of coverage for people with H.I.V. and AIDS, huge backlogs of claims and complaints, and a failure to answer telephone calls from consumers, doctors and drugstores.

Bush administration, of course, promises to fix things.

Yeah right.

Trust none of what you hear and even less of what you see. --Bruce Springsteen

Kathleen Healey, a lawyer at the Alabama Department of Senior Services, said: “Despite the prohibition of door-to-door marketing, agents arrive on residents’ doorsteps stating that the president sent them, or that they represent Medicare. Some telemarketers insist they are calling from Medicare, and they tell beneficiaries that they will lose their Medicare if they do not sign up for the telemarketer’s plan.”

Medicare has taken “vigorous action” to halt marketing violations, said Abby L. Block, a Medicare official.

But David A. Lipschutz, a lawyer at California Health Advocates, a nonprofit group, said that Medicare’s generous payments to private plans still encouraged predatory sales practices.

“Every enrollee in a private Medicare plan is a potential source of substantial profits,” Mr. Lipschutz said.

So Medicare has become a slush fund for the politically well connected.  And you and I, taxpayer, carry the extra burden.  

It sounds like the Republican plan for Medicare and Prescription Drug coverage will end up costing us more than the Democratic one.  What we always forget is that in whatever they do, the GOP has to make sure that their big campaign contributors are overpaid in the process.

This is just like with Blackwater.

tags: medicare  privatization  

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