Great, let's have insurance companies have more control over health care. I would never have voted for her anyway, this idea should cost her lots of votes. Here is the opinion piece with with which I disagree. She postulates that competition reduces costs. Sure, by denying care to patients. United Health is currently under investigation for using AI to deny care.
Few politicians are willing to touch entitlements these days, but Nikki Haley dared to do so in the recent debate on Medicare. A new study shows her pitch to expand the Medicare Advantage program could lower costs and improve care.



Medicare Advantage plans are growing rapidly and cover about half of the entitlement’s beneficiaries. Private insurers administer the plans and are paid by Medicare per beneficiary. Insurers compete for patients by offering benefits, including vision and dental care that aren’t available in traditional fee-for-service Medicare.

Lower premiums have made Advantage plans popular in particular among low-income seniors. Plans are able to offer more benefits at lower cost in part by reducing unnecessary care and expensive hospital stays.

Avalere, a healthcare consulting firm, analyzed utilization rates in traditional Medicare versus Advantage plans. After adjusting for disease and demographics, Avalere found that fee-for-service utilization was 12% higher for skilled nursing homes and 37% higher for hospital inpatient care in 2019.

Hospitals are the biggest driver of Medicare spending. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has tried to use performance-based payment models such as accountable care organizations (ACOs) to improve preventative care and reduce hospital admissions. But these haven’t moved the dial as much as Medicare Advantage plans.

The Avalere study doesn’t dissect why healthcare utilization is so much lower in Medicare Advantage. Democrats who oppose private competition accuse insurers of putting up bureaucratic hurdles to treatments. That may be true in some cases, but it doesn’t explain why inpatient hospital utilization is so much lower among Advantage patients.

One reason is private insurers have a financial incentive to keep patients out of the hospital by improving adherence to treatments and coordination of care. CMS also scores plans based on quality metrics, including diabetes control, medication adherence and post-emergency room visits. Higher-rated plans receive bonuses.

As Ms. Haley noted at the GOP debate, the Medicare Board of Trustees estimated this year that the program’s hospital trust fund—financed by payroll taxes—would run dry by 2031. If fee-for-service utilization rates were similar to those in the Advantage program, Avalere projects that the hospital trust fund would remain solvent until 2048.

But instead of expanding Medicare Advantage, the Biden Administration is trying to limit the program’s growth by restricting plan marketing and reducing payments for treating higher-risk patients under the guise of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. The reason is purely ideological: Progressives loathe private medicine and want the government to control all healthcare.

As an alternative to competition, the Administration is resorting to brute government force to curb Medicare spending: restricting access to new Alzheimer’s treatments, imposing price controls on other medicines, and reducing reimbursements to doctors. CMS recently finalized a rule cutting physician fees by 3.4% next year, which it purported to offset partly by increasing payments to ACOs that treat more minorities.

Medicare’s low reimbursement rates are driving doctors to leave private practice for hospitals, which reduces provider competition and increases healthcare spending. Ms. Haley’s idea of unleashing private competition isn’t a panacea to runaway entitlement spending, but it’s less painful than the price and reimbursement controls that Democrats want.

LINK: https://www.wsj.com/articles/m...dicaid-services-nikk

The woman is a RINO.

Is she even worth the time and effort? She won’t be the nominee and in some miraculous scenario where she is I think she would lose pretty hard. The woman isn’t very likable. Vivek nailed it when he likened her to Dick Cheney in 3 inch heels.

I wouldn't recommend a Medicare "dis"Advantage plan to my WORST enemy. Nikki Haley can go suck a bag of her favorite phallic symbol.

She knows she will never be president. She’s just trying to get on a ticket.

quote:

I wouldn't recommend a Medicare "dis"Advantage plan to my WORST enemy.

+1

quote:

Originally posted by Anush:

quote:

I wouldn't recommend a Medicare "dis"Advantage plan to my WORST enemy.

+1

Ugh, i have a Humana Advantage Plan, should I drop it?

quote:

Originally posted by losvaqueros:

quote:

I wouldn't recommend a Medicare "dis"Advantage plan to my WORST enemy.

Ugh, i have a Humana Advantage Plan, should I drop it?

We are currently in the "Open Enrollment" period; you have until December 7 to make a change without penalty.

I strongly recommend that you taker a good look at traditional MediCare Supplement plans. The Medicare (dis)advantage plans typically have many restrictions.

There was a discussion of this in another thread, take a look at it. The recommendation was highly in favor of traditional Medicare supplement plans, as opposed to Medicare "Advantage."

https://sigforum.com/eve/forum...935/m/8630080405/p/1

quote:

Originally posted by Patriot:
She knows she will never be president. She’s just trying to get on a ticket.

I agree that she wants to be a VP pick. Won't be Trump's!
But remember: if she becomes VP she's just a heartbeat away...

quote:

Ugh, i have a Humana Advantage Plan, should I drop it?

I was with the Humana Advantage Plan for many years and was happy with it. And then in September, I and other area Humana members received notice that we will no longer be in their plan network for our area starting in January. We have a very nice, new, hospital/clinic and now we have to travel over 50 miles to find an in-network physician and hospital services.

Of course, they said we could still use their out of network services.

quote:

Originally posted by losvaqueros:

quote:

Originally posted by Anush:

quote:

I wouldn't recommend a Medicare "dis"Advantage plan to my WORST enemy.

+1

Ugh, i have a Humana Advantage Plan, should I drop it?

My wife spent a good deal of time over the year prior to use going on Medicare studying Medicare Advantage vs. Medigap and the various plan options. In addition to her own research she worked with two different Medicare consultants.

Bottom line: Medicare Advantage was not right for us. Not even close.

I've seen the commercials for the advantage plans and their additional 'benefits' look like junk to me. I've also heard those plans are very limited in who will accept them.
As for the writer's comment that doctors are leaving private practice for hospitals; he's clueless. Doctors left private practice en masse years ago, when HMOs became dominant and the docs could no longer compete with the HMO's price (and service) cutting. If a doc still in private practice decided to leave it now (a rare bird these days atleast where I live), they are going to join a group owned by an health care organization/HMO etc, or be directly employed by an HMO type company. They aren't going to be employed by a hospital (unless the hospital owns the health care organization). They are definitely not running out and becoming 'hospitalists', directly employed by a hospital to see only in-patients.
With Medicare paying doctors even less, you will see what's left of private practice docs taking even less medicare patients, if they take them at all...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sacramento Johnson,

quote:

But remember: if she becomes VP she's just a heartbeat away...

Whatever you think of Nikki Haley, would you prefer the "other" one who is only a heartbeat away?

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Ms. Haley

[middlefingertothefeminists] Mrs. Haley [/middlefingertothefeminists]

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by losvaqueros:

quote:

I wouldn't recommend a Medicare "dis"Advantage plan to my WORST enemy.

Ugh, i have a Humana Advantage Plan, should I drop it?

We are currently in the "Open Enrollment" period; you have until December 7 to make a change without penalty.

I strongly recommend that you taker a good look at traditional MediCare Supplement plans. The Medicare (dis)advantage plans typically have many restrictions.

There was a discussion of this in another thread, take a look at it. The recommendation was highly in favor of traditional Medicare supplement plans, as opposed to Medicare "Advantage."

https://sigforum.com/eve/forum...935/m/8630080405/p/1

FWIW, I'm on a high deductible G supplement plan after quite a bit of research. But I'm new to all this. Still, it's working for me...