Former President Donald Trump began the process of privatizing Medicare.
How awesome but luckily Trump is now out and
we have a Democratic President in charge and
I'm sure he ended this effort to privatize Medicare right?
Except he didn't.
President Joe Biden has left in place a program a pilot program that began
under the Trump administration that has the very goal of privatizing Medicare.
Let me give you the details.
This is known as direct contracting.
That's the name of the program.
The direct contracting program was established by the Center for Medicare and
Medicaid Innovation during the waning months of the Trump administration.
Which included former pharmaceutical industry executives,
Wall Street bankers and right-wing policy consultants notorious for
gashing public health programs.
So great.
I'm sure it'll work out well if the very people involved
in crafting this program have a massive profit motive in mind right.
Now under the direct contracting model, here's how it works.
So called direct contracting entities are paid monthly by the Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid services to cover a specified portion of a patient's medical care.
A significant shift from traditional Medicare's direct reimbursement of
providers.
So let's stop for a second for all those goons who pretend that
they hate bureaucracy that they want to cut out the middlemen.
What this program does is implement middlemen who try to skim off or or pocket
some of the money that is provided in reimbursements from the Medicare system.
That's how this program works and they claim that it's more efficient.
That's the lie that's being sold to Americans about this issue.
So DCEs are allowed to this is the part that's concerning are allowed to
pocket the funding.
They don't spend on care, an arrangement that critics believe will
incentivize the private middlemen to skimp on Medicare patients.
Many of whom could be auto enrolled into DCEs without their knowledge or
permission.
That's awesome because our health care system gives us so
many choices guys, so many choices.
The more you privatize it,
the more choices you have choices like not being told that you're now being
enrolled in something that you have no knowledge about.
By the way, virtually any company, any entity can apply to be a so
called direct contractor, okay including investor backed startups.
So Wall Street investors are chomping at the bit, they're salivating over this.
They love it.
And Biden hasn't scrapped it.
He has the power to do it.
The health and Human Service Secretary,
Javier Becerra, he has the power to scrap this, but he hasn't?
And the question is why if the Biden administration is supposed to be so
much better, so much more decent compared to the Trump administration.
Why are they putting this or allowing this program to remain in place?
And by the way, not many lawmakers are even paying attention to this.
But there is one lawmaker that I want to give a tremendous amount of credit to.
She's not a justice Democrat, but she's a strong progressive and
that's Katie Porter.
Katie Porter has been trying to draw attention to this and
she talks about why this pilot program is such a huge problem.
Let's watch.
>> This program was supposed to make Medicare more efficient, but
actually it does just the opposite.
Rather than allowing patients to go to providers
directly under traditional Medicare DCEs invite insurers and
investors to step in and interfere with the care that Americans get.
By adding in these intermediaries the Trump administration undermines
the very purpose of Medicare, which is to provide quality health coverage and
increased financial security for seniors.
Why would anyone want to overhaul this program?
And the answer as with too many things in Washington is the greed of corporate
special interests.
This direct contacting entity model is just one more example of
the Trump administration's many attempts to wreck a functioning
successful popular government program.
For the sake of lining the pockets of its corporate donors.
>> She's absolutely right about that.
Now much of the criticism was directed Donald Trump especially because he
implemented this program in the waning months of his presidency.
However, there needs to be some ire directed toward the Biden
administration and its failure to scrap this program.
And, we're already seeing the abuse here.
We're seeing this being expanded at present the pilot includes
53 of these direct contracting entities.
In 38 states Washington DC and Puerto Rico doctors Richard Gilfillan and
Donald Berwick pointed out in a September article for health affairs.
The 28 of the current DCs are controlled by investors, not health care providers.
And guys like let's just stop for a second and I know that this is basic,
this is elementary stuff, but I just wanted to really sink in.
What do investors do?
Like what is the objective of an investor?
Does an investor is a charity work?
No. And investor invests his or her resources
into something with the intention of getting a return on that investment.
So the like the fundamental issue here is that it's not
about providing health care to people.
It's not about having a well functioning system, it's not about efficiency,
it's not about any of that.
It's all about profit.
And by the way, since it's Medicare, it's all about profiting off of who us,
the U S taxpayers, the individuals who fund the Medicare program.
Another way to redistribute wealth from the bottom to the top.
Another way that they're doing it.
They do it through the Defense Department, they do it through the health care system.
They'll always find a way to rob you and Biden's letting it happen.
Ask him why hit up the member of Congress representing your district and
ask them why they're not drawing attention to this,
why they're not doing a goddamn thing about it.
Medicare is an incredibly popular program because it provides
health care to our seniors.
And it's so popular that a huge portion of this country, majority of
voters in this country would like to see it expanded to cover all of us.
But the likelihood of that ever happening is lessened
by the fact that the system that we have now is being ripped
apart as we speak with the help of the Biden administration refusing to scrap it.
One of the physicians who's active in trying to get
rid of this pilot program also cautions about like
what will happen if Medicare gets privatized.
And I think we have some examples from the past to focus on.
So for instance, she says, and this is Dr Malinow Medicare advantage.
The first wave of Medicare privatization showed us that inserting a profit
seeking middleman into public coverage does not save money for taxpayers.
But rather cost more money while also taking away care choices from seniors.
If left unchecked, the direct contracting program will hand traditional
Medicare off to Wall Street investors without input from seniors, doctors or
even members of Congress.
And again, advocates according to Jake Johnson over at common dreams
have been publicly sounding the alarm about the DC program for months.
Warning that it could fully hand traditional Medicare over to Wall Street
investors and other profit seekers, resulting in higher costs for
patients and lower quality care.
Not a peep from Javier Becerra or Joe Biden, nothing.
Joe Biden can't even get his own damn agenda passed.
In the very least he should do away with some of the damage.
Just some of the damage that was done by the Trump administration.
Can he handle that?
Can you handle that?