As the debate over the future of Medicare hits its stride during the upcoming presidential campaign, policymakers should look at the cost of Medicare Advantage plans as one way to save money.
Advantage plans are those run by private insurers rather than the government providing government payments for hospital care and physician costs. My plan also includes drugs, dental, and eye care.
Private plans have been an option in Medicare since the 1970s, but enrollment in private plans remained relatively low through the 1990s. Aside from changing the name of Medicare private plans from Medicare+Choice to Medicare Advantage (also referred to as Medicare Part C), the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 made significant changes that propelled enrollment growth. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 also made many changes that enhanced plan enrollment. As a result, about half of all seniors have a Medicare Advantage plan, or 30 million people, up from 11.5 million in 2010.
Unlike the government plan for Medicare, which costs me $170 a month, whether in the program or an Advantage plan, the private insurer puts money in my pocket to join.
The coverage costs me nothing other than the fee for Medicare. But there’s a lot more. My Advantage plan gives me a $25 monthly reduction in my Medicare payment or $300 yearly. The plan pays my YMCA membership of $43.10 monthly or about $500 annually. The program gives me a $500 debit card to use mainly for dental work and eyeglasses, and I get a credit of $25 a month, or $300 a year, for over-the-counter drugs and items like throat lozenges. All told, that’s $1,600 a year for just signing up.
I’m not exactly willing to give up these perks, but it seems the government has been awfully generous to the private insurers if they can entice me with all these goodies.
The government pays private insurers about $12,000 a year for people who sign up for Advantage plans—a number that has risen significantly in recent years. That allowance is where I think the government should reassess whether that’s too much money.
Although I realize my health is better than many seniors, I cost my insurer about $1,200 last year. I’ll bet there are more people like me in my county, which is the geographical area upon which the government payouts are based.
According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, Lycoming County, where I live in central Pennsylvania, has seen better health since the 1980s. However, lung cancer and diabetes have increased somewhat.
I think various changes must be made to save Medicare, but I think a good hard look at Advantage programs and how they operate may be a good start without causing significant hardships to seniors.
Posted: March 21, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized
“Be kind to everyone on the way up; you’ll meet the same people on the way down.“
Wilson Miznor
Of all the reactions to the Potential Arrest of Donald Trump for political reasons one of the ones I found most amusing was this:
Trump attacked DeSantis right before his election. Now his surrogates are coordinating with Dems in FL to file frivolous ethics complaints against DeSantis. But the second Trump has a potential issue, suddenly everyone has to have his back and must comment on rumors immediately. https://t.co/6wEK3P8EdV
How DARE Ron DeSantis not say anything about something that hasn’t happened in a state that isn’t his to defend somebody who has not only been attacking him relentlessly but has had their surrogates with the help of the left try to impede him.
Of course this didn’t stop Mike Pence appearing on ABC from calling this out for what it is:
It just feels like a politically charged prosecution here. And I, for my part, I just feel like it’s just not what the American people want to see. We got real challenges in this country today, Jon. People are facing record inflation, a crisis at our border. We have war in Eastern Europe, the American people are anxious about the future and here we go again, back into another politically charged prosecution directed at the former president of the United States, and I would just hope for better.
If I’m DeSantis I don’t say a thing until something happens and if I am asked I’d say something like this:
This is the reason why so many people are leaving NY and choosing Florida you have a DA ignoring actual crime while going after people for political reasons.
Of course what I think he should say is now moot because before I could finish writing the post DeSantis said this:
He hit all the best key points:
Soros prosecutor downgraded 50% of felonies to misdemeanors
He’s basically weaponizing the office
The real victims are the regular people because crime that hurts people is ignored.
I’m the only Governor who has removed a Soros prosecutor from office
He even managed an interesting line that I’m sure Donald might not appreciate:
“Look, I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a pornstar to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I can’t speak to that. But what I can speak to is that if you have a prosecutor who is ignoring crimes happening every single day in his jurisdiction and he chooses to go back many many years ago to try to use something about pornstar hush money payments, you know that’s an example of pursuing a political agenda and weaponizing the office,”
But given all the attacks Trump has given him he’s got no business complaining. Although his surrogates are all pissed off. I’ll give Brian Jacobson the last word.
Team Trump: WHY ISN'T DESANTIS TALKING ABOUT THE TRUMP PROSECUTION?!?!?!
Supposedly this week the NYC DA is going to file charges against Donald Trump concerning the Stormy Daniels Business.
That this was already passed on by previous ambitions DA’s and that the charges even in liberal NY will have a very hard time sticking is not relevant. This is what Soros is paying for and if nothing else the DA’s and Secretaries of State that he has invested millions into over the last two decades have stayed bought.
It will be a fundamental change in American Jurisprudence and not in a good way.
The amount of pixels that are being generated is staggering and several theories have been advanced as to why this and why now. The two best that I’ve heard are this:
It’s no surprise the Trump ‘perp walk’ nonsense has started – three Biden’s caught receiving money from China, Hunter admitting the laptop is indeed real, the bank crash(es), train derailments, COVID info starting to leak out, #J6footage released.
NY City is rapidly approaching Snake Plissken territory as actual dangerous criminals are let free to walk so it might be a good Squirrel moment not just for Biden and the dems but for the local DA as well who is making NY safe for the criminal class again.
Many predict that this move will backfire dramatically on the Democrats.
“If this happens, Trump will be re-elected in a landslide victory,” Elon Musk tweeted in response to a report about Trump’s potential pending arrest.
He’s not alone in thinking this way. “If they handcuff Trump, he is your next president,” Scott Adams predicts.
Trump Defense Lawyer Joe Tacopina agrees. “I believe this will catapult him into the White House.”
Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire has another theory. “They want Trump to be the Republican nominee,” Walsh tweeted Saturday, referring to the Democrats. “That’s obviously the play here. There is no other conceivable reason to arrest and perp walk him on a bulls—t misdemeanor charge. I might be overestimating the tactical intelligence of the idiot power-hungry hacks behind this. But if there is any political strategy then that has to be it.”
I seem to recall they really wanted to run against Trump in 2016 and that didn’t work out so well for them.
I must say that I have to disagree with both Scott Adams and Elon Musk here in terms of the electoral effect.
The Trump voter is already highly motivated and this move isn’t going to make him any less motivated.
The GOP voter who doesn’t like Trump while seeing this as an injustice will not see it as a plus to vote him in after this.
And the people who don’t pay attention will shrug as they do not care.
More importantly as long as the Soros Dems are controlling the counts in Arizona, and PA, and Michigan and Wisconsin its not going to matter even if it means millions of more votes for Trump, because they’ll create millions more plus one at 1 AM as they did before.
The irony here is that the leftists who hate Trump would have been almost done with him if they didn’t bother to steal the last election. He would be in the final two years of his lame duck period which would have been quite a spectacle had they just played by the rules.
But I’m convinced that Trump is a money raiser for them even more than Pelosi & Obama were for the right. There are rich leftist, particularly in Hollywood who will practically pour out their wallets at the sound of his name.
Believe me every just like 10 years ago every Republican’s was Hitler to them every GOP candidate will be considered “Trump” or “Worse than Trump” for decades after he is dead and gone.
Remember it’s all about generating generational wealth for these guys. That’s the game.
Finally if I’m a Democrat office holder I’d be rather scared by all of this.
There are plenty of deep red states out there and plenty of very angry voters in such states. If I’m an ambitious GOP lawyer who wants to make a name for him or her self and generate giant fundraising money all I have to do is run in one of those deep red states and promise to look into high level national Democrats and do to them what is now being done to Trump.
Imagine if DeSantis decides to start opening up these kind of investigations. Pitcher Sarah Sanders doing the same in Arkansas, or Glenn Younkin’s Virginia going in that direction. Unless as a democrat you’re squeaky clean (sorry if you were drinking when reading that last sentence) this will now put a bullseye on your back that there will be plenty of office holders now and in the future to use this precedent against you.
Mitch McConnell once warned Harry Reid that his shenanigans on the filibuster would come back to haunt the left and sooner than they think. I suspect the same will come of this.
They really should have thought about that if they decide to go forward with this.
The left has a new mantra. Well, they always have a new one. And their newest mantra is, “The right doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘woke.'”
As far as I can gather, the earliest use of “woke” was by African American musician Lead Belly, who added “stay woke” in an afterword of his recording of “Scottsboro Boys,” which was about the injustices faced by nine black youths accused of raping two white women in 1931.
But words often change meanings. For instance, centuries ago “garble” meant “to sift.” In the spice trade “garbling” was the process of removing impurities from spices. Over time, “garble” evolved into meaning confusing, unclear, and yes, impure. For instance, someone might say, “I couldn’t understand the voicemail message you left for me, it was garbled.”
The definition of woke has similarly evolved. It appears woke made a reappearance in the public dialogue in 2016 after the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2016, but by 2020, conservatives had adopted and co-opted the word. People who are woke–this is my take–are rigidly beholden to far-left political beliefs and they will use mob action to enforce their viewpoints.
“Politically correct,” a term that emerged from the left, was similarly co-opted by the right, so liberals dropped it years ago.
The word woke is a much more serious problem for the left, which is why libs, in a futile effort, are trying to reclaim it, or at least neutralize its meaning. After all, woke is an unpleasant word with only four letters and just one syllable, it is better suited for our contemporary sound bite and pithy headline culture, compared to the more cumbersome “politically correct.” Over the past week leftist journalists, an intellectually incestuous lot, pushed back. An opening to them was given by Bethany Mandel, the co-author of the best seller Stolen Youth, which is about the dangers of woke culture. Last week, in an interview captured on video–one that went viral–Mandel suffered, in her words, “a momentary brain freeze,” and she wasn’t able to clearly answer a question about the definition of woke.
But shortly afterwards on Twitter, Mandel was able to clarify what woke means.
“A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination,” Mandel Tweeted last week, “and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination. It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which equality of group result is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob.”
A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination, and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination. It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which equality of group result is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob.
Just now, as I was finishing up this entry, I watched as Jen Psaki, in the premiere airing of her MSNBC show declare, “Republicans have gone all-in on their anti-wokeness.” Psaki, a smug know-it-all, then presented a one-sided view of Mandel’s “momentary brain freeze.”
All but admitting defeat in the word war, Matthew Cooper in Washington Monthly says the word needs to be disposed. The headline of his article is, “Let’s retire the word ‘woke.'”
Too late!
The legacy media is up woke creek without a paddle.
This month two woke mobs attacked in California. The Federalist Society invited a US Appeals judge, Kyle Duncan, who was appointed to the bench by Donald Trump, to speak at the Stanford Law School. Only the mob, the led by the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusivity dean, Tirien Steinbach, all but prevented the judge from speaking. Diversity to the left hasn’t meant diversity of opinion for years.
In my opinion, outside of the ten percent or so of the populace who is indeed woke, no one can argue that such boorish antics are justifiable.
As is also the case of the second California campus woke outburst, when Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk spoke at the University California, Davis. “Black-clad goons” goons is how the Daily Mail described the protesters who pepper-sprayed attendees and smashed windows at the hall where Kirk spoke.
Kirk’s UC Davis address is available in podcast form. Unlike Duncan, Charlie was permitted to speak. And in his opening remarks, Kirk vowed, “Tonight, you’re going to see that anyone who disagrees with me tonight is not just allowed–but is encouraged to go ask [me] a question.” Kirk even called for his dissenters to head to “the front of the line.”
Now, that’s what I call diversity.
Those leftist protesters–I believe it’s fair to call them rioters–were probably egged on by a woke Sacramento Bee opinion columnist, Hannah Holzer, who, in a since retracted claim, said Kirk “called for the lynching of trans people.” In his remarks that evening at UC Davis, Kirk responded, “That is a lie. I have never done that,” adding, I’ve always been clear about peaceful activism.”
Charlie Kirk responds to Sacramento Bee for saying he has “called for the lynching of trans people.”
“That is a lie. I have never done that … I’ve always been clear about peaceful activism.”
The unpeaceful ones that night at UC Davis were the members of the woke mob.
The great majority of Americans don’t have politics on the top of their informational diet. But this truly silent majority, the ones who decide the outcome of elections, is aware of the evils of leftist violence, intimidation, misinformation and censorship. And now there is an ugly word for that and more that is now entrenched in the mainstream conversation.
“Woke” is that word.
To my conservative writers and influencers: The other side has betrayed a weakness and a fear. They hate it when we say “woke” to decry radical policies and angry leftist mobs. What is worse than “woke?” Well, those odious things that the word describes, such as the recent outrages at Stanford and UC Davis.
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