Dr. Oz And Donald Trump Want To Destroy Medicare Forever

 Private Medicare Advantage plans are killing seniors and bankrupting hospitals. Now the Trump administration is preparing to make them mandatory, ending Medicare as we know it.

By Alexander Zaitchik, Truthdig

Presently tied up in Senate confirmation hearings, Mehmet Cengiz Oz, the Oprah-certified wellness advocate known as “Dr. Oz,” might soon become director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. If confirmed, the daytime TV doctor has agreed to sell his roughly $600,000 in UnitedHealthcare stock, along with an array of medical industry holdings in devices, supplements and pharmaceuticals.

Yet the mortal threat Oz poses to American health care goes deeper than his six-figure stake in the country’s biggest and most notorious private insurer. For years, Oz has worked as a pitchman for Medicare Advantage plans. This managed care alternative allows corporations to bill the federal government for administering Medicare benefits on its behalf and is a boon for private insurers. As a UnitedHealth shareholder and licensed insurance broker, Oz has long been financially and ideologically committed to the takeover of traditional Medicare by private insurers. Led by UnitedHealth, the insurance industry has made a hugely profitable algorithmic science out of denying and delaying care to maximize profits.

Private insurers already receive more than half of Medicare’s $840 billion budget. With Oz’s confirmation in sight, they are now eyeing the rest. The first step, announced in the conservative policy blueprint Project 2025, is to make Medicare Advantage “the default enrollment” for newly eligible seniors. The long-term plan is the ruination and displacement of traditional Medicare entirely — and ultimately to a system, controlled by big insurers, that Oz calls “Medicare Advantage for All.”

There are two ways Republicans could orchestrate a frontal attack on traditional Medicare, with Oz’s boosterism for Medicare Advantage leading the way. The first and most difficult would involve an act of Congress that transfers current Medicare enrollees into Medicare Advantage plans. This would almost certainly trigger pushback in the courts, led by the 30 million Americans happily enrolled in Medicare.

The second gambit is slower, stealthier and more likely to succeed. Operating beyond the reach of Congress, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation is a policy hub created within CMS by the Affordable Care Act. CMMI’s charter grants considerable powers to implement pilot projects to test different payment and delivery methods, waiving any troublesome provisions or statutes that may stand in the way. If these pilots are determined successful — defined as reducing costs without impacting quality, or improving quality without increasing costs — then CMS can ramp them up nationwide without congressional oversight.