The Daily Background

I’ve talked periodically about Medicare on this blog, and I think it’s an important issue. Why? I’m a liberal/progressive/Democrat, and I think social services provided by the government are important. Now I am a “young person,” but I do have grandparents who were kicked off Medicare by this Republican-controlled Congress and White House Administration. Everybody’s parents and grandparents (Republican, Democrat, Independant alike) were kicked off the program when the Republicans “reformed” it, and then everybody had to re-sign up, choosing from dozens upon dozens of complicated plans, and there were confusing restrictions upon who could advise seniors on which plan to pick.

This plan to “reform” Medicare was essentially a plan to spend less money on our seniors, and on the program, which liberals set up to help pay for the costs of taking care of our aging citizens. The idea is that we, as the richest country in the world no matter how you measure it, by far– can afford to care about our fellow citizens. Well, when the Republican reforms came into effect early this year, it was clear that there were many more problems than Democrats had warned about. In the process of so-called effective Medicare “reforms,” the Republicans effectively broke it. I’ve been talking about this because it’s an important issue. And if you want evidence, you can ask your grandpa. Or, you can pick up today’s Washington Post. They’re the results of the Senate’s investigation of the Medicare’s investigation of how much Medicare now sucks:

Medicare’s process for investigating complaints about bad care is “broken,” leaves patients in the dark, and is of “no benefit to improving the overall quality” of medical care received by millions of elderly and disabled beneficiaries, Senate investigators have found.

It turns out, Medicare does not do the investigation itself.

What they do is, they hire private contractors. Yes. Yesyesyes. Like everyyyy otherrrrr part of this Administration, Medicare looovvesss to hire out private companies to do federal work. But not so fast. Washington Post has the goods on them:

Medicare pays private contractors known as Quality Improvement Organizations about $300 million a year to work with hospitals, doctors and nursing homes to improve care and investigate complaints in the giant health insurance program. There are 53 QIOs — one in each state plus one each in the District, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands. Most are set up as nonprofits.

Wow, some of them are set up as for-profits? That should be alarming it itself. But it turns out, it doesn’t really matter how they’re set up, because:

The Post also documented lavish salaries and perks paid to some QIO executives and directors, and it reported that the physician-dominated boards included few consumers.
[…]
…little of the money paid to the QIOs is based on their performance, and he questioned why so few contracts are subject to competitive bids. In the most recent three-year contract cycle, six contracts were bid, and of the six only one was not renewed. Yet at the same time, Grassley wrote, “There is sparse evidence to suggest that QIOs are effective.”

And so what does Medicare think of this non-partisan Senate review of Medicare’s quality control system? They’re very protective of their private contractors, and resistant to change:

Medicare officials said yesterday that they are reviewing the letter from the Senate committee, adding in a statement that the QIO program “is improving the quality of American health care.”

Full article.

Filed under: Medicare Related, Z-TDB Blog