First, ThankYou to Christine Maguire for her leadership in the MDI Hospital team which provides excellent healthcare to residents and visitors. We are all fortunate to be the beneficiaries. In my experience, every employee examples caring and consideration in their various roles.
Specifically, ThankYou for spotlighting the dangers of Medicare Advantage to participants in its for-profit schemes and threat to every person who relies on hospitals negatively impacted by Medicare Advantage's predatory financial practices.
As all our government programs are being shredded by the Republican mania for privatization, our hospitals are 'the canary in the coal mine' calling attention to the detrimental, dangerous, and even deadly results of privatizing essential and emergency government services.
Medicare Advantage Harm to Patients
Medicare Advantage Myth-Busting – CEPR
"This year, the majority of Americans eligible for Medicare coverage chose to enroll in private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans rather than Traditional Medicare. Insurance companies that run these MA plans spend significant sums of money to blanket seniors with marketing that highlights the supposed advantages of MA like low upfront costs, supplemental coverage, and other unique perks like subsidizing gym memberships. However, the ads leave seniors in the dark on the downsides of MA like heavily restricted networks that damage one’s choice of provider along with dangerous delays and denials of necessary care."
Rural hospitals across the country are facing severe financial difficulties, and Medicare Advantage plans are exacerbating those challenges, according to an analysis released by the American Hospital Association.
Excellent! Excellent! Excellent! summary of the realities of "Disadvantage" programs! I discovered recently that my "Advantage" insurer would have reimbursed for the full retail price ($175) of a kevlar canoe paddle I bought because it would encourage a more active and healthy lifestyle. given the fact that the average canoeist lives in a large city and uses their canoe once a year during the summer vacation this particular bucket don't hold much water. what it does is put forward the idea of a free lunch and as the old saying points out there "Ain't nothing free about that kind of lunch!" Besides I found out about the free paddle a year and a half after I bought it so it was too late to apply for the refund!
Charles you are a man after my own heart and I could not agree more when you say that at the route of Bar Harbor's problem is a near total lack of financial discipline. As my old pal naturalist/philosopher/novelist Edward Abbey once pointed out "We had a good thing in America but got carried away, in a nation devoted to the proposition that too much is not enough we are squandering our inheritance...." Anyone who doubts this should read the excellent book "Amusing Ourselves To Death" by Neil Postman. In Bar Harbor's case we have found the enemy and the enemy is us!
I thank Ms. Maquire for all she has done to manage and lead an outstanding hospital that serves not only a rural population, but a swarm of summer visitors.
Though many people like their Medicare Advantageprograms, they work best for people who can switch and search for new providers when their doctors get out of being a MedicareAdvantage provider. Now I know one of the reasons why. They get short changed and their practices fail financially. I will support all rural medical facilities to be compensated equally with Medicare Advantage patients as regular Medicare.
I do not support the for profit Medicare Advantage that is a cost burden to doctors and hospitals, but also is so much more expensive to the taxpayers than regular Medicare.
For all of the current Adminstration’s chainsawing alleged governmental waste, the chainsaw needs to be directed to the profit making excesses of Medicare Advantage, not gutting and disadvantaging regular Medicare.
Donna as a retired person whose life savings has been cut in half by runaway inflation I simply can't afford regular full Medicare coverage so I am stuck with Medicare Advantage. Of course the Advantage coverage is often full of holes but Martin's Point costs me $34 a month plus the cost of the underpinning of basic Medicare. Of course that's precisely the result of the Feds using our tax dollars to dole out support to private companies Advantage plans. If that doesn't get your blood boiling I'll bet this does. The local "agent" who sold me the plan got a substantial "finder's fee" of hundreds of dollars of taxpayer money and then gets a large percentage of that fee every year I stay enrolled in Martin's point. I thought he'd actually be my "agent" helping me navigate the medical insurance swamp. First time I called him for assistance 10 years ago he said, "Oh I don't deal with the details, you have to call Martin's Point."
First, ThankYou to Christine Maguire for her leadership in the MDI Hospital team which provides excellent healthcare to residents and visitors. We are all fortunate to be the beneficiaries. In my experience, every employee examples caring and consideration in their various roles.
Specifically, ThankYou for spotlighting the dangers of Medicare Advantage to participants in its for-profit schemes and threat to every person who relies on hospitals negatively impacted by Medicare Advantage's predatory financial practices.
As all our government programs are being shredded by the Republican mania for privatization, our hospitals are 'the canary in the coal mine' calling attention to the detrimental, dangerous, and even deadly results of privatizing essential and emergency government services.
Medicare Advantage Harm to Patients
Medicare Advantage Myth-Busting – CEPR
"This year, the majority of Americans eligible for Medicare coverage chose to enroll in private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans rather than Traditional Medicare. Insurance companies that run these MA plans spend significant sums of money to blanket seniors with marketing that highlights the supposed advantages of MA like low upfront costs, supplemental coverage, and other unique perks like subsidizing gym memberships. However, the ads leave seniors in the dark on the downsides of MA like heavily restricted networks that damage one’s choice of provider along with dangerous delays and denials of necessary care."
.https://cepr.net/publications/medicare-advantage-myth-busting/.
Medicare Advantage Harm to Hospitals
Rural hospitals across the country are facing severe financial difficulties, and Medicare Advantage plans are exacerbating those challenges, according to an analysis released by the American Hospital Association.
.https://www.chiefhealthcareexecutive.com/view/medicare-advantage-plans-are-hurting-rural-hospitals-report.
Excellent! Excellent! Excellent! summary of the realities of "Disadvantage" programs! I discovered recently that my "Advantage" insurer would have reimbursed for the full retail price ($175) of a kevlar canoe paddle I bought because it would encourage a more active and healthy lifestyle. given the fact that the average canoeist lives in a large city and uses their canoe once a year during the summer vacation this particular bucket don't hold much water. what it does is put forward the idea of a free lunch and as the old saying points out there "Ain't nothing free about that kind of lunch!" Besides I found out about the free paddle a year and a half after I bought it so it was too late to apply for the refund!
Charles you are a man after my own heart and I could not agree more when you say that at the route of Bar Harbor's problem is a near total lack of financial discipline. As my old pal naturalist/philosopher/novelist Edward Abbey once pointed out "We had a good thing in America but got carried away, in a nation devoted to the proposition that too much is not enough we are squandering our inheritance...." Anyone who doubts this should read the excellent book "Amusing Ourselves To Death" by Neil Postman. In Bar Harbor's case we have found the enemy and the enemy is us!
I thank Ms. Maquire for all she has done to manage and lead an outstanding hospital that serves not only a rural population, but a swarm of summer visitors.
Though many people like their Medicare Advantageprograms, they work best for people who can switch and search for new providers when their doctors get out of being a MedicareAdvantage provider. Now I know one of the reasons why. They get short changed and their practices fail financially. I will support all rural medical facilities to be compensated equally with Medicare Advantage patients as regular Medicare.
I do not support the for profit Medicare Advantage that is a cost burden to doctors and hospitals, but also is so much more expensive to the taxpayers than regular Medicare.
For all of the current Adminstration’s chainsawing alleged governmental waste, the chainsaw needs to be directed to the profit making excesses of Medicare Advantage, not gutting and disadvantaging regular Medicare.
Donna as a retired person whose life savings has been cut in half by runaway inflation I simply can't afford regular full Medicare coverage so I am stuck with Medicare Advantage. Of course the Advantage coverage is often full of holes but Martin's Point costs me $34 a month plus the cost of the underpinning of basic Medicare. Of course that's precisely the result of the Feds using our tax dollars to dole out support to private companies Advantage plans. If that doesn't get your blood boiling I'll bet this does. The local "agent" who sold me the plan got a substantial "finder's fee" of hundreds of dollars of taxpayer money and then gets a large percentage of that fee every year I stay enrolled in Martin's point. I thought he'd actually be my "agent" helping me navigate the medical insurance swamp. First time I called him for assistance 10 years ago he said, "Oh I don't deal with the details, you have to call Martin's Point."