[Melian]

Medicare Advantage, the $450-billion-a-year system in which private insurers oversee Medicare benefits, grew out of the idea that the private sector could provide healthcare more economically. It has swelled over the last two decades to cover more than half of the 67 million seniors and disabled people on Medicare.

Instead of saving taxpayers money, Medicare Advantage has added tens of billions of dollars in costs, researchers and some government officials have said. One reason is that insurers can add diagnoses to ones that patients’ own doctors submit. Medicare gave insurers that option so they could catch conditions that doctors neglected to record. The Journal’s analysis, however, found many diagnoses were added for which patients received no treatment, or that contradicted their doctors’ views.

https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/medicare-health-insurance-diagnosis-payments-b4d99a5d

“We beat Medicare.”

[Melian]

Australia is hit by its largest parasitic outbreak in more than 20 years - and one group of people is getting sick at an alarming rate” :

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13610179/Australia-gastro-outbreak.html

Could it be the vaxx? /sarc

[lyby]

“We beat Medicare.”

*********************************************

Below is an article from The Retirement Systems of Alabama newsletter that I received over the weekend:

[Bob Ireland]

***Instead of saving taxpayers money, Medicare Advantage has added tens of billions of dollars in costs ... One reason is that insurers can add diagnoses...***

As someone who has been on an Advantage plan for some years, I submit some hanky panky folderol along the way. First, the Advantage plans have exploded with NEW entitlements such as dental care, OTC allotments, Medicare B billing refunds, grocery subsidies. That explosion has resulted in another explosion of competition as to who can offer the most, resulting in a few dozen Advantage plans multiplying into hundreds of such plans.

I suspect some of these upstarts can't always pay their medical bills and thus start to fudge here and there. I also presume the prime suspect in this wild party is the USGvt❗