Member-only story
A Recently Introduced House Bill Aims to Prevent Private Insurers From Further Exploiting Medicare
A few months ago, I was having some work done on my house.
The professional completing the work is someone I have known literally my whole life. He is well-spoken, honest, efficient, intelligent, and is as progressive as I am, which makes our occasional political conversations comfortable.
This particular day, though, our conversation about health insurance and Medicare started to get tense.
I could see my friend’s expression morphing from one of affable interest into genuine annoyance, so I quickly changed the subject.
What was it I said that made him so agitated?
I simply informed him the Medicare Advantage plan he was on is not Medicare.
“But Medicare is in the name,” he puzzled.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s the problem.”
Since its passage in 1965, Medicare has been on the list of items at which the republican party, and even some members of the Democratic party, have been steadily chipping away.
The George W. Bush administration landed a major blow to it in 2003 with the passage of the “Medicare Modernization Act” that created something called “Medicare Advantage” under…
