Medicare advisory groups says Part C plans cost taxpayers more
Medicare private managed-care plans, known asMedicare Advantage, are unfairly favored over traditional Medicare,according to a highly influential commission. The privately administered HMO-style plans, which cover 8.3 millionseniors, cost 12 percent more per patient, and program payments aretwice that of traditional government-administered Medicare, accordingto a report released by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, theindependent panel of experts that advises Congress on the Medicareprogram. “Medicare beneficiaries should be able to choose between thefee-for-service Medicare program and the alternative delivery systemsthat private plans can provide, so long as the choice is financiallyneutral to the program,” the MedPAC commissioners said in the report. It would be a better idea to make reimbursement the same and allow the private plans to compete on equal footing, they said. “The free market’s so-called ‘invisible hand’ is picking taxpayers’pockets,” said Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., chairman of the House Waysand Means Health Subcommittee. “Medicare’s overpayments to private plans cost taxpayers tens ofbillions of dollars,” he said. “That’s why MedPAC continues to adviseCongress to stop wasting money on inefficient private plans.