For those who don't know, Medicare Part C was an attempt to leverage the private insurance market to create a competitive framework for Medicare.
It has been a massive, epic failure resulting in
huge cost overruns. But then who is really surprised when greedy private insurance companies belly up to the Medicare trough to get their fill of copious taxpayer dollars?
Clearly this figure shows us very little about what happened between 1997 and 2004. Feel free to presume that the program saved Medicare so much money in those years that it offset the documented massive costs in other years, but I doubt you’d find many serious scholars agreeing with you. No, on the whole, the program has cost us and cost us dearly.
This need not be a condemnation of private plans, but it isn’t good news for pro-market advocates. Were I to don that hat, and I have done so, I’d be infuriated or embarrassed by this abysmal performance of MA plans. As a taxpayer, I’m none too happy.
These are the same insurance companies Paul Ryan wants to entrust our parents and grandparents to. How can anyone conscience this massive payoff to the private insurance companies who have performed so abysmally?
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