THIS TIME ON CODE WACK!
What could another Trump presidency mean for the rise in Medicare private plans and what would that mean for patient care and financial waste in our healthcare system and for the Medicare Trust Fund?
To find out, we recently interviewed Dr. Diljeet Singh, an integrative gynecologic oncologist and incoming president of Physicians for a National Health Program [PNHP]. With more than 25,000 members across the United States, PNHP advocates for a universal, comprehensive, single-payer national health program. This is the second episode in a two-part series.
SHOW NOTES
WE DISCUSS
If the upcoming Trump administration implements Project 2025’s policies for Medicare, what do you think will happen?
“… what they said they plan to do…is to automatically enroll people [and] … make the default ending up on a private plan. And that could be a mess in a couple different ways. The one way it could be a mess is all the ways we just talked about, … why it sucks for patients and why their care might not be as good.
“We didn’t talk about the waste, right? Medicare Advantage, private Medicare, they waste money. And I say waste because I think any money that isn’t spent on actual health care is waste. But United Healthcare, Aetna, these are extremely profitable businesses and their profiting off people not getting medical care, right?
“So the estimate of how much more money do we spend on … private Medicare plans versus traditional Medicare is somewhere between $120 and $140 billion a year of wasted money — of money that we could literally give everybody in Medicare, dental, vision, real dental vision and hearing coverage, right?
“We could do a lot of things with that money, but right now we’re just overspending …
“And so not only will people get suboptimal health coverage and potentially worsen their health outcomes in all different kinds of ways, but also we may absolutely bankrupt our Medicare trust fund … ” – Dr. Diljeet K. Singho
What would that mean, then, for seniors?
“… what would it mean if we bankrupted this system because we gave all this money to these companies? I’d like to think that we wouldn’t get there, that we would see it, that the office of the OMB [Office of Management & Budget] would help us figure this out and prevent us from getting there.
“But what we do know is that people go into debt, people get medical bankruptcy, people spend their lifetime savings, sell their houses, find themselves in unimaginable situations.
“And between Medicare and Social Security, the idea was that we were going to, over the course of our lifetime, put money into these systems that would support us when we were older. This is not somebody giving us money. This is money that we worked over the course of our lifetimes to have. ” – Dr. Diljeet K. Singh
So what is at the root of Project 2025’s health policy recommendations and how do you think patients will be affected?
“… the problem with that project 2025 [is] it was written by people who do not understand healthcare policy. And it was written from a perspective of like, ‘how do we get corporations to make more money? Because that’s who we’re thinking about.’
“And even if we think about now, you know, the idea that the Centers for [Medicare and] Medicaid would be run by Dr. [Mehmet] Oz, who himself is somebody who makes money and has invested in some of these private health insurance companies, right? So his own personal gain is tied up in all that.
“So what does it really mean? We have no idea. Would you automatically get signed up on the one [Medicare Advantage plan] that’s most popular in your town? We don’t know. What does that mean ‘the default?’ How are they going to do it?
“And then what’s gonna happen to healthcare providers who are not … there are hospitals now who don’t take some of these private Medicare plans because they couldn’t afford the staff to get the prior authorization, or they couldn’t deal with not being paid for months because of these denials and these authorizations. So what happens to those hospitals?
“I think there’s a lot of things that these Project 2025 plans have not thought through in a meaningful way. And so what does it mean? I have no idea. And how do we deal with it? I think we just have to constantly engage with our legislators, whatever party they belong to, about ‘let’s do sensible things for people and their health care.’” – Dr. Diljeet K. Singh
Helpful Links
The quiet privatization of government health insurance programs, Axios
Project 2025’s Medicare Changes Would Restrict Older Americans’ Access to Care and Imperil the Program’s Financial Health, Center for American Progress
Project 2025 would compound existing public health challenges, Public Health Newswire
What Project 2025’s Potential Medicare Changes Mean for You, Investopedia
UnitedHealth Group says cyberattack impact tops $2B, but profits remain strong, Chief Healthcare Executive
Medicare Dis-Advantage: Overpayments and Inequity, The Nation
Support Traditional Medicare by Leveling the Playing Field with Medicare Advantage, Center for Medicare Advocacy
About PNHP, Physicians for a National Health Program
FAQs on Medicare Financing and Trust Fund Solvency, KFF
Episode Transcript
Read the full episode transcript.
Biography: Ada Briceño
Ada Briceño has dedicated her career to uplifting marginalized voices and bridging communities.
In addition to union organizing and political work, she has led many civil rights, immigrant rights, women’s rights, and environmental efforts.
She was named one of Orange County’s “100 Most Influential” by the Orange County Register for 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2014.
Ada Briceño immigrated to the United States at age 6, when her family fled the civil war in Nicaragua.
Today, she serves as Co-President of UNITE HERE Local 11, representing over 32,000 hotel workers in Los Angeles County, Orange County and Arizona.
She is Chair of the Democratic Party of Orange County.
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