Medicare Advantage: A By-the-Numbers Look at This Profit-Seeking Healthcare Scam

Don't get scammed 

Emma Curchin, Brandon Novick and Peter Hart for Common Dreams

The quasi-privatized system called “Medicare Advantage,” otherwise known as Part C, was created in 2003 as a means of expanding the role of private sector corporations in the publicly-funded Medicare system. 

Proponents claimed it would lower costs and improve health care for seniors. It has achieved neither of those goals; instead, MA has become a wildly profitable scheme for private insurance giants, who have become adept at taking advantage of Medicare’s billing model to claim exorbitant profits. At this point, MA is more profitable for many companies than their conventional insurance businesses.

And the program continues to grow. Medicare Advantage now has more enrollees than traditional Medicare, thanks in no small part to aggressive public relations campaigns that sell seniors on the idea that the plans cut costs and increase choice. Congress has simultaneously failed to plug the holes in traditional Medicare, pushing seniors towards MA to avoid high out-of-pocket costs. Policymakers can fill these gaps and guarantee true comprehensive coverage simply by redirecting the overpayments to MA insurers into Medicare.

Numerous studies and media investigations have documented the problems with Medicare Advantage. What follows is a collection of some of the most notable figures documenting the high costs of this failed experiment in privatizing Medicare.

$88-$140 billion
The amount that the federal government overpaid private insurers under Medicare Advantage in 2022, according to the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP).

$612 billion
The amount that Medicare Advantage plans overcharged the federal government due to upcoding and favorable selection between 2007 and 2023, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), an independent congressional agency established to advise Congress on issues affecting the Medicare program.

$600 billion
According to one study, this is the projected excess spending between 2023 to 2031 due to the ways that Medicare Advantage plans use ‘upcoding,’ the process of classifying beneficiaries as being sicker than they really are in order to increase payments.

With one of Rhode Island’s largest solar energy projects online, Brown moves toward net-zero emissions

Using an old gravel pit, no trees were killed for this energy project

Brown University

With final regulatory approval secured on Tuesday, Nov. 19, one of the largest solar energy projects in Rhode Island — Dry Bridge, in North Kingstown — is generating enough power to offset two-thirds of on-campus electricity consumption for Brown University, the project’s exclusive off-taker. 

Located on a 240-acre field at the site of a former gravel pit, Dry Bridge is among the state’s highest-capacity contiguous solar generation projects, on track to generate 66.8 million kilowatt hours of power per year.

The culmination of the project, to which Brown committed in 2018, marks a key milestone in the University’s commitment to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. As it continues an ongoing transition from fossil fuels, Brown will now draw the majority of on-campus electricity use from local renewable energy, ensuring that the University serves as a leader for climate solutions and decarbonization.