In this connection, it is useful to note that the Yale Medical Group still takes ordinary Medicare. It is just being dropped by this Medicare Advantage plan. There is no reason that the government should pay more for these plans than for regular Medicare. If using a for-profit company as an intermediary really increased efficiency, then no subsidy would be needed. The planned cut is to equalize cost of Advantage plans with regular Medicare.Janknitz wrote:Medicare Advantage plans were reimbursed around 12% more than traditional Medicare plans. This was a Clinton AND Bush era plan to entice people to go to HMOs (HMOs were to use the extra money to provide things like optical, dental, and gym memberships to get more members) which was thought to be a more economical delivery system. The idea was that these incentives should have gone away a long time ago, but lobbying prevented that until now. So UHP isn't going to suffer a loss of profits, they cut corners on more expensive care.
If you are losing your trusted health care provider and you want to change to traditional Medicare or a different HMO, contact your local SHIP/HICAP office for FREE counseling to evaluate plans. The number is on the back of your Medicare and You book.
It sounds suspiciously as if some companies are reducing the number of doctors who specialize in particularly expensive illnesses in order to induce patients facing above-average costs to get out of their risk pools and into someone else's.
