Medigap News

I read a fascinating commentary today called, “As Medicare goes private, the press just stands by.” It offers the notion that it appears as though the media is paying no attention to the deterioration of the Medicare system thanks to the overtaking of the well-funded, well-marketed (but less than stellar) Medicare Advantage Plans.

The author points out that Medicare is seemingly contributing to the problem:

“The chief vehicle for undermining Medicare is Medicare Advantage, which is being aggressively pushed by insurance companies and agents and, unmistakably, by the Bush administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that oversees Medicare. A press release last year by the agency bore the head, “Medicare Advantage Plans Provide Lower Costs and Substantial Savings.” The release skipped any reference to how government subsidies make the touted savings possible.“

So what’s to be done? In other cases of the government derailing its own systems, the press would step in and fire at the President and his team and that should create some sort of equilibrium to put everything back to center on this issue, but in this case, that’s not happening.

“The press was on its toes when the Bush Administration proposed private investment accounts, saw it for the scheme to privatize Social Security that it was, reported on it and thus helped derail privatization when the public understood what was at stake. Not so with the administration’s plan to privatize Medicare.”

While we have been chronicling the problems with Medicare Advantage, the issues discussed in this commentary go far deeper than deceptive marketing - the issues point to an entire unraveling of the Medicare system thanks to the special interests of private insurers and the government’s desire to subsidize the efforts to privatize Medicare.

What does that mean to you?

That means that at some point there may be no government funded Medicare. It could mean that seniors have no choice but to use a private insurers with higher rates and high out of pocket costs. The author of this piece fears that that will happen, and people won’t even notice until it’s too late.

“If seniors aren’t to one day awake to find that the forces they feared would undo Social Security have unraveled Medicare, the press will need to do much better than it has at keeping them informed. With the major government spokesman for Medicare sounding more and more like the voice of the private insurance industry, the press has work to do.”

We will keep reporting on this topic, as we believe that the implications of changes to Medicare as described above could be devastating for America’s seniors. Please, only talk to qualified, licensed insurance agents who can talk with you about all of your options and not steer you towards plans that offer *them* more lucrative commissions.

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