C.V. Allen: Medicare Advantage already pocketing a ‘healthy’ windfall

John Kehoe’s thoughtful column “HIT on seniors is really going to hurt” (Page 7A, Aug. 30) suggests the Health Insurance Tax (HIT) will increase costs to those on Medicare Advantage and is therefore unjustified. But there might be another and more accurate explanation.

By law the sickness level of those in Medicare Advantage must equal that of the usual Medicare population, but a large amount of information suggests this is not so and that Medicare Advantage, through means both legal and illegal, has a healthier (and less expensive) population than regular Medicare. A large study measured the cost per month of those leaving Medicare Advantage vs. those who remained. Those who left cost $1,012 per month compared to $710 per month for those who remained in Medicare Advantage.

Whether this explains any or all of the planned HIT I do not know. But this is true: the commercial, money-making, for-profit health insurance industry has been trying the get its hands on Medicare money for years and they know well the easiest way to do so is through careful patient selection, not more efficient care. To John Kehoe, with whom I would probably agree 90 percent of the time, beware: Things are not always as they seem. There are those in politics who would “save” Medicare but who actually would help to bring it down.

This story was originally published August 31, 2017 at 4:07 PM with the headline "C.V. Allen: Medicare Advantage already pocketing a ‘healthy’ windfall."