The Journal
At the time when Congress launched the Medicare Advantage program concept several decades ago, the theory in place was insurers would make Medicare more efficient, have an incentive to keep patients healthier and probably save money for the government in the process.
Those at the forefront of promoting the concept at that time probably never in their wildest dreams anticipated that one day a major, well-respected national newspaper would have on its front page the headline “Medicare paid $50 billion to insurers for untreated ills.”
Yet that was the headline in the July 9 edition of the Wall Street Journal that no doubt evoked gasps in many households across the country that have placed their trust over the years in health insurance coverage provided by such plans.
“Private insurers involved in the government’s Medicare Advantage program made hundreds of thousands of questionable diagnoses that triggered extra taxpayer-funded payments from 2018 to 2021, including outright wrong ones … a Wall Street Journal analysis of billions of Medicare records found,” the July 9 article reported.