Tag: private health insurance

Hospitals, doctors drop private Medicare plans over payment disputes

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

One large health system with hospitals in Virginia and Ohio this year cut off in-network access to consumers enrolled in some Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield Medicare and Medicaid health insurance plans.

Hospitals, doctors drop private Medicare plans over payment disputes

Related:

Vanderbilt Health to drop some Medicare Advantage plans

H/T: Christopher Westfall | Senior Savings Network (this is not an endorsement)

Health Insurance Whistleblower: Medicare Advantage Is “Heist” by Private Firms to Defraud the Public

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Many of the nation’s largest health insurance companies have made billions of dollars in profits by overbilling the U.S. government’s Medicare Advantage program. A New York Times investigation has revealed that under the Advantage program, health insurance companies are incentivized to make patients appear more ill than they actually are. Some estimates find it has cost the government between $12 billion and $25 billion in 2020 alone. We speak with former healthcare insurance executive Wendell Potter, now president of the Center for Health and Democracy, who says Medicare Advantage will be recognized in years to come as the “biggest transfer of wealth” from taxpayers to corporate shareholders, and blames the lack of regulation over the program on the “revolving door between private industry and government.”

Health Insurance Whistleblower: Medicare Advantage Is “Heist” by Private Firms to Defraud the Public

Related:

‘The Cash Monster Was Insatiable’: How Insurers Exploited Medicare for Billions (archived)

‘There’s no way that patients are going to be able to afford that.’ Why aren’t new drugs that can help you lose weight more widely used?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

A pair of new drugs offer something many Americans desperately want: a way to lose weight.

‘There’s no way that patients are going to be able to afford that.’ Why aren’t new drugs that can help you lose weight more widely used?

“Ten years ago, policymakers would come out and say, ‘Fat people need to eat less and move more.’” – majority of people still feel this way, unfortunately. Most of them don’t know how hard it is to lose weight or if they have, they don’t understand that one weight loss plan may not work for another. Same way it is with medical treatments. One size fits all doesn’t fit all!