https://www.marketwatch.com/story/medicare-is-quietly-being-privatized-does-anyone-care-6afb22b4
More than half of all Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled through private insurers.
Marketewatch.com
This is incorrect. Medicare Advantage completely supplants regular Medicare, you sign away your right to be on regular Medicare and you cannot go back.
bullshit. if medicare should cover more then we should make it cover more. of course this is a bad thing. are you crazy?!
Once a patient enrolls in an advantage plan they lose the ability to see any physician they want. They also lose payment based on "medical necessity" which means if your doctor thinks you need the care medicare will pay for it. Advantage plans can and do deny care they don't want to pay for and also deny care by artificially restricting the number of providers you can see . These plans look good but they are really bad news as care isn't there anymore when you need it.
Well there's both sides, I mean while in theory it's just the free market making a stopgap for the weakpoints in medicare to buy time for them to be fixed. The reality is we already know what happens when corporations get their hands on something that shouldn't be free market. They rack up killer profits, and use those profits to buy congressmen and judges, and before long not only is congress not going to move forward to stregnthen medicare to cover those holes... but in fact create new ones to make sure that medicare becomes even less valuable without one of these plans.
The reality is we already know what happens when corporations get their hands on something that shouldn’t be free market. They rack up killer profits, and use those profits to buy congressmen and judges
So they do exactly what they do with things that should be free markets, also.
100% exactly. Which is why I believe that free market private sector should never be allowed anywhere near things that aren't luxuries. I don't have a problem with free market giving us shitty movies, video games, televisions etc... but yeah, it should have been yanked from every level of schools, medical care, police, housing etc... decades ago.
No healthcare system can exist in America without a few wealthy elites sucking from the top. If universal healthcare existed in America it would still serve the purpose of funneling money to the elites some how. They always get their cut.
I care, because I don't think freaking public services shouldn't be in the hands of corporations.
So is K-12, to the applause of idiots.
Charter schools are a trojan horse. Theres a bunch where I live that advertise on the radio that they teach conservative principles, with kids being used as props saying "I learned that I want friends that don't need other people's help." It's disgusting. "Challenger Schools" they're called. Education should be the great equalizer. Instead we have economic segregation.
Some comments from Challenger blog I found:
"A note to Current parents:
If you are not aware about this, you are not tuned in and just the ripe fodder for Challenger, where they seek to sublimally brain wash your child via a curriculum skewed towards ‘Christian Proselytzation’. Some comments heard in school:
"Many people have told me that Challenger has a very conservative-minded stance. I have heard of ‘liberty tests’ being administered to students as early as 3rd grade these days. The purpose of these tests is to promote conservative thinking in students before they have political opinions of their own. Global warming is taught as challengable scientific theory. Schools are purple and may become a lot redder:(
Challenger used to be good, but now it is highly conservative-minded."
https://pakorakorner.blog/2008/06/13/challenger-school-myths-pros-and-cons/comment-page-2/
These are brainwashing centers made to train fascist ideals into kids at scale, allowed because they sell themselves as an escape hatch from the public schools we've allowed to fall into complete ruin to cut oligarch's taxes.
We're privatizing any and all societal commons into oblivion, because our owners demand to sell it all off and pocket it all. And as usual, we let them. Apollo showed us we need a society, not "public private partnerships."
I don't think insurance will ever work in this country in my lifetime...probaby have to move to another country if I want functional insurance....
Ireland is rolling back their two tier in favour of a single tier cause the two tier got all fucked up. "Slaintenare". Two tier medical systems don't work as advertised.
Wtf does caring about anything do about our willingness to unite to solve a common problem? Isn’t Caring about anything surely the start of action?
“I care, but I don’t do anything about it.”
Sometimes this happens. But any individual and therefore, organization of individuals, has to start by caring first. Only people who care do ever actually do anything about that which they care about.