Posts made in August 2019

The Benefits of Medicare-Advantage-For-All

A properly designed Medicare-Advantage-For-All plan will showcase our unique public-private partnership and how it can deliver a true American health care system capable of achieving affordable and accessible for every American citizen.

We are striving to make the United States the first successful industrialized nation to develop a private sector health care market that is capable of offering all Americans the tremendous benefits of well-paying employment, cutting-edge technology, breakthrough pharmacology, and the most advanced capability to treat illness and preserve health that the world has ever known

If Americans come together to support Medicare-Advantage-For-All, it is one way to fix our broken health insurance system and not throw the Baby Out with the Bath Water.

Bernie Sanders is currently campaigning to give everyone “Traditional Medicare for All”. His S. 1129, has 14 co-sponsors in the Senate. At Medicare-Advantage-For-All.Com, we liked Bernie’s idea of involving the Secretary so much, we developed our own Draft Senate Bill asking the Secretary of Health and Human Services to use the resources of his Department to come up with a program and report back to Congress on it, so that it can be debated and acted on in a timely fashion.

Sanders’ proposal for extending Medicare for All is soundly criticized by Republicans as being too expensive. Republicans believe his proposal will cost the nation $32.6 Trillion Dollars over the first 10 years, and they are probably right. Since our national debt is now only $20.7 Trillion Dollars, the idea of doubling down on the national debt is not going to pass, while Republicans control the Senate and the White House.

Medicare Advantage (MA- Medicare Part C) however, has broad bipartisan support in Congress. The current MA program appeals to both sides of the aisle for good reasons. It extends Medicare Advantage coverage to all persons over the age of 65 without any pre-existing condition exclusions and in most cases, without the any need to pay premiums out of pocket.

If we are successful in getting Medicare Advantage plans re-engineered and extended to all Americans:

It would not require market stabilization funds and the 3R Risk abatement programs and the CSR payments.
It would eliminate the need for special federal and state funding to support the marketplace exchanges.
It would continue to use capitation financing (which is the very basis of the Republicans previously proposed Medicaid reforms).
It would not require insurance carriers to raise their rates in order to expand services under the inflationary 80 – 85 Percent federal Loss Ratio requirements.
It will cost a lot less than the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In 2015, if we had purchased high-quality health insurance for all the ACA participants and paid all the premiums in full, we would have saved the American Tax payers well over $60 Billion Dollars.

It would eliminate the need for selective taxes by establishing an equitable funding base that doesn’t single out Wall Street or the health insurance companies that we are relying on to administer the program in a cost-effective manner for the benefit of the American people.

We must successfully convince the Democrats and the Republicans that Medicare Part C is the “Best Answer to Repeal and Replace Obamacare.” We ask all the members of the 116th Congress in both political Parties and their staffs to support this program. We direct them to read our website, our proposals, and the more detailed “The Best Bi-Partisan Answer to Repeal and Replace Obamacare,” which was hand-delivered to many of their D.C. offices in 2017. We have sent them the Fifth Edition of True American to all of them, which you can download under True American.

We hope you become a supporter of our effort.

We want you to become a supporter. Here’s how: You can download our Membership Application and complete it with your contact information and send it to us with your financial support or you can complete the Pay Pal Credit card authorization. Tell us whether you would like to be listed as a supporter on this website or remain confidential, and if we can count on you to be an Advocate.

We welcome any level of taxable (non-tax deductible) financial support with which you feel comfortable.

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For more information on our membership and Medicare-Advantage-For-All movement, visit our Medicare-Advantage-For-All plan page, call us at 1-888-683-3719 or contact our Medicare-Advantage-For-All Consultants or email: contact@medicare-advantage-for-all.com.

Join the Movement: Medicare-Advantage-For-All

Interested and serious about lowering the high cost of health care, while getting higher quality medical care? We are too! Therefore, we started Medicare-Advantage-For-All.Com. We are a grassroots political advocacy and educational movement on a mission to promote the highest quality, True American health plan for the lowest possible cost.

Medicare Advantage is the most popular health plan in the United States. It now covers over 22.6 Million Americans over age 65. We would like to see the Medicare Advantage Plans re-engineered and extended to everyone. Our federal government has the ability and the knowledge to lower our National Healthcare GDP by $1.3 Trillion Dollars. The things that they have learned from our collective experience with the Affordable Care Act coupled with the knowledge and the success of our Medicare Advantage plans, will enable them to create comprehensive, exciting, viable, affordable, attractive Defined Contribution Medicare Advantage health plans for all Americans.

Medicare-Advantage-for-All will deliver comprehensive cost-effective health insurance for all Americans. Our current Medicare Advantage program works for seniors and it works for taxpayers! Traditional Medicare is too expensive and extending it to every American, even on a buy-in basis, is not going to improve our health nor lower the cost! The Medicare Advantage, on the other hand, is a Defined Contribution health plan designed to be less expensive than Medicare. It costs less and is currently the most popular health insurance program in America. We can save over $1.3 trillion dollars and lower our National Health Care GDP to 12% by eliminating half our chronic illness with a properly designed Medicare-Advantage-For-All plan that includes an integral health and wellness program supervised by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Democrat “Medicare for All” legislation and our Medicare-Advantage-For-All “draft” Senate Bill are compatible, and the American people must get our political leaders in Congress to combine them right now. Medicare is running out of money (bankrupt in 2026). Also, our international businesses cannot successfully compete in world markets unless our national Healthcare GDP is competitive with the other nations with whom we compete. Currently the U.S. is about 8% higher than the average.

With the support of people like yourself, we can enable legislation and government action to improve the health and financial security of all Americans, ensuring immediate access to the best health care in the world at the lowest possible cost. Congress has enjoyed this type of plan for themselves and 8 Million other civil servants for decades.

Our goal with Medicare-advanatge-for-all.com is to effectively communicate this information to our primary audiences, which includes members of Congress, key congressional staff members, the White House, policymakers in the executive branch, academics, and D.C. think-tanks, policy wonks, the media and our loyal members. This movement and web site will show you how working together we can improve the health of the American people and lower the cost of our health care.

Who are our supporters?

Our supporters are a diverse group of people representing citizens, organizations, businesses, and health care providers and a bipartisan group of politicians in Congress, who support our Medicare Advantage Plans, Medicare Part C and its enhancement

Do you want to become a supporter? Here’s how: You can download our Membership Application and complete it with your contact information and send it to us with your financial support or you can complete the Pay Pal Credit card authorization on the web site. Tell us whether you would like to be listed as a supporter or remain confidential and if we can count on you to be an Advocate.

We welcome any level of (non-tax deductible, non-refundable) financial support with which you feel comfortable.

For a Full Individual Membership annual subscription is $35. For Full Group Membership, we ask for an annual subscription of $100. The Group membership opportunity is for organizations, including our physicians, their staffs, health care providers, community health centers, insurance carriers, any private organizations that would qualify for group health insurance coverage, including businesses and managed care providers.

For more information on our membership and Medicare-Advantage-For-All movement, visit our Medicare-Advantage-For-All About plan page, call us at 1-888-683-3719 or email our Medicare-Advantage-For-All Consultants at contact@medicare-advanatge-for-all.com.

What is Medicare-Advantage-For-All?

As an American, you’ve heard of Medicare and likely know what it offers and costs. However, we are proposing a better solution for Americans called: Medicare-Advantage-For-All. With Medicare-Advantage-For-All, we will deliver comprehensive cost-effective health insurance for all Americans.

Traditional Medicare is too expensive and extending it to every American, even on a buy-in basis, is not going to improve our health or lower the cost! The Medicare-Advantage-for-All, on the other hand, will be a Defined Contribution health plan designed to be less expensive than Medicare and most ACA programs. Medicare Advantage costs less and is currently the most popular health insurance program in America.

A properly designed Medicare-Advantage-For-All plan will showcase our unique public-private partnership and it can deliver a True American health care system capable of achieving affordability and accessibility for every American citizen.

What Advantages Does the Medicare-Advantage-For-All Plan Offer?

Medicare-Advantage-For-All Americans and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) are OK together. There is no need to repeal or replace Obamacare.
Medicare-Advantage-For-All will be designed to attract young and middle-aged Americans, the 8.4 Million ACA participants, students, low wage workers and all the people who comprise the 30 Million uninsured Americans, who are currently unwilling or unable to buy health insurance.
Medicare-Advantage-For-All will cost less per person than Obamacare and the fee-for-service Medicare. Taxpayers, the federal government, and program participants will all benefit from lower cost health insurance.
The program will be underwritten, insured and administered by competing health plans with risk-based capitation reimbursement. The health plans will work together with integrated networks of providers that have a proven track record for effectively delivering health care and health insurance.
Medicare-Advantage-For-All will incorporate the Heritage Foundations Conservative Principles for Health Reform.
The rating of Medicare-Advantage-For-All Americans will require the cohesive use of the collective buying power of the federal government to effectively contain, control and reduce health care and Rx costs nationwide.
Medicare-Advantage-For-All Americans will know No state boundaries, even as the carriers will all be subject to state insurance regulations for licensing.
The carriers for Medicare Advantage-For-All will be required to have integral health and wellness programs with a dedicated focus on improving the physical and mental health and well-being of the American people and increasing their productivity in the workplace and in their communities.
Medicare-Advantage-For-All Americans will be required to offer a special low-cost comprehensive program for the growing number of low-wage workers in the United States in conjunction with the National Association of Community Health Centers.
Medicare-Advantage-For-All Americans will correspond to and coordinate with constructive Medicaid work rules and Medicaid expansion plans and make it seamlessly easier for people to get off the Medicaid rolls. The goal will be for the United States to achieve near 100% participation of all citizens that want to be insured in this True American way and who are willing to buy affordable health insurance.
Medicare-Advantage-For-All Americans will allow maximum use of Health Savings Accounts and provide tax credits and premium subsidies to those Americans who are least able to afford health insurance due to their incomes.
Congress will fund Medicare-Advantage-For-All Americans with an across-the-board re-structuring of the Medicare Trust Funds. All arbitrary ACA taxes on certain businesses or certain taxpayers must be repealed, including all Cadillac taxes, investment income taxes, health insurance taxes, and medical device taxes which only hit select businesses and American households.

For more information on the Medicare-Advantage-For-All plan and the movement, visit our Medicare-Advantage-For-All plan page, call us at 1-888-683-3719 or contact our email us at: contact@medicare-advantage-for-all.com. To support and join this movement, you can download our Membership Application and complete it with your contact information and send it to us with your financial support or just complete the Pay Pal Credit card authorization on the About and Become A Supporter Pages on our web site.

How Will Medicare-Advantage-For-All Be Funded?

Medicare-Advantage-For-All plans (MAA) can deliver an American health care system capable of achieving affordable and accessible health care for every American. Medicare-Advantage-For-All will be designed to attract the young and middle-aged Americans that have not been able to take advantage of Obamacare. We envision these plans to be offered right along-side the ACA/Obamacare plans, which currently only cover 8.4 Million participants. All residents of the U.S., who are not eligible for (or covered by) other health insurance, will be able to participate in these new MAA plans. The MAA Plans should be especially attractive to students, low wage workers, and all the other people who comprise the 30 Million uninsured Americans, who cannot afford to buy ACA health insurance.

This sounds great, right? But, how will this be funded/paid for?

Medicare-Advantage-For-All will be funded just like Obamacare; however, unlike Obamacare, MAA will generate significant savings in the overall expenditure of health care paid by the federal and state government and the American people and our domestic businesses.

We envision a two stages process, something like an Apollo rocket. The first stage is the extension of a Defined Contribution Plans, like most large American employers use, to create access to medical care for the American people that don’t already have health insurance. The second stage would be the introduction of a revolutionary next-generation Medicare Advantage plan we are calling “Apollo” after the successful space program.

The first stage program will initially be financed similarly to the Obamacare/Affordable Care Act (ACA). Government subsidies will be provided to those American citizens that meet specific income guidelines. There will be income levels, above which the cash subsidies will be made phase into tax credits received by the participants at the time their taxes are paid. Anyone above certain upper-income levels that should be able to afford a reasonably priced health insurance plan would pay premiums for the programs without any government assistance on a sliding scale. No one will be required to participate.

Overall, the programs will be less expensive by design. But to start, like all the new federal health plans in the past, we expect some over subsidization and underpricing of the programs, as was the case with both Medicare and Obamacare. After the first two years though, costs should stabilize, as they did with the ACA. If we are successful with the integral health and wellness programs, the positive effects of the program will gradually lower the actual cost of health care. This will take a few years, but all the benefit plans will start out being less costly than Obamacare Qualified Plans for several reasons:

First, they will be engineered by insurance experts using all the latest information. These modern programs will not be subject to unnecessary federal regulations that force health insurance companies to offer benefits that people don’t need.
Second, the Department of Health and Human (HHS) services would cooperate with the carriers to work out constructive capitation reimbursement schemes that effectively shift the risk from the federal government to the carriers. This will require them to assume full responsibility for the health and well-being of their members. In addition, HHS will appropriately participate in favorable provider cost negotiations to make the first-generation product as cost-effective as possible.
Third, adverse selection will be minimized. The old-world provisions of waiting periods for certain benefits will be allowed for premium health products. All pre-existing conditions will be accepted and covered immediately, but not necessarily by all plans. Some Pre-X programs will be paid for like Medicaid, financed on more of a cost-plus basis with shared responsibility between the federal and state governments wherever possible. Nothing suggested here will preclude Block-Grant funding.

The first stage programs will be common sense Defined Contribution health insurance contracts, like those commonly used by most large employer groups with integral employee wellness initiatives. We believe the second stage Defined Contribution plans will be much more revolutionary. They will reward the participants for improving their health condition. Premium credits and increased benefit levels will be given to reward participants for specific healthy behaviors. People will be rewarded for maintaining and improving their health, and these people will not be required to pay more for Americans, who are fully capable, but either cannot or will not take care of themselves. No one will be left out in these programs, and no one will be disadvantaged. However, those people who can maintain a healthy lifestyle but for whatever reason do not choose to do so will have to pay a little more for that their health insurance. This is only fair and reasonable, considering that they are more likely to make use of their health plans. This second stage program is going to require some creative financing because traditionally we have financed health care by charging the healthiest people among us more than we should, in order to pay for the unhealthiest among us. This was the impetus for the Obamacare Individual Tax Mandate, which was repealed. We have to start rewarding the correct behaviors rather than condoning the incorrect behaviors. As Warren Buffet says, “We can not continue to do the wrong thing indefinitely.”

Every participant in Medicare-Advantage-For-All will be underwritten as an individual with full consideration of their specific health condition. Each person’s rates will be directly associated with his/her health condition and changes in that condition, like car insurance. If you have a lot of car accidents or speeding tickets, you are going to pay more than someone who never had a traffic ticket and never had an accident. This is just common sense, but we don’t use common sense when it comes to health insurance. Some of our politicians want to remove all personal responsibility when it comes to a person’s health condition in favor of government responsibility. That isn’t how it works in the real world.

The new Defined Contribution Apollo Medicare Advantage contracts will require special underwriting. The traditional underwriting for these programs will have to be substantially restructured to allow individual participants to pay vastly different rates for essentially the same benefit programs based on their health condition. Some plans may wish to allow beneficiaries to enroll for two- and three-year periods. These longer-term contracts would have stronger economic incentives for both the carriers and the beneficiaries to promote wellness and preventative care. The ability for our medical practitioner to initiate, reinforce, support, and monitor their patients will be properly rewarded and supported by their reimbursements under this new Apollo type plan.

Our Medicare-Advantage-For-All plans should be able to reduce the risk and consequently, the expense of chronic illness by about 50% in the first two years. These savings would amount to more than $1.3 Trillion annually and reduce the NHC-GDP by 6% percent to approximately $2.35 Trillion Dollars, or 12% of Total GDP to start.

This target population for this plan is primarily the 30 Million uninsured Americans plus the 8.4 Million Obamacare subscribers, about 75% of which receive federal subsidies in order to make the ACA programs affordable. Medicare-Advantage-For-All is not looking to replace Obamacare. What we want to do is create a program that the America people can afford to choose. A program that will give Americans a choice that will attract most of the uninsured Americans that Obamacare has failed to attract.

If we are successful with an affordable, comprehensive insurance plan with an integral health and wellness component, other health plans will quickly incorporate these features into their programs. Eventually, everyone, except perhaps fee-for-service Medicare and collective bargaining agreements, will have state-of-the-art health and wellness programs that will lower everybody’s rates and improve the general health of most Americans.

If we do this right, the federal government will be able to reward the health plans, as they do now under the STAR program, with more federal money based on their ability to improve outcomes, improve health status and reduce the overall cost. If we get the incentives right, everybody wins. The effect of this reduction will lower the cost of health care and health insurance for individuals and businesses and will increase our health condition, our productivity, and our competitiveness as a nation. We firmly believe that in order for the United States to remain a competitor in world markets with the greatest health care system on the planet earth, we need to commit ourselves as a nation to achieve the lowest national health care GDP of all the high-income developed nations by the year 2030! If we can return man to the moon, and plant an American flag on Mars, we can certainly achieve the “best” health of any industrialized nation on the planet.

For all these reasons listed, this is how we will pay for Medicare-Advantage-For-All.

Want to become a supporter of the Medicare-Advantage-For-All plan and movement? Here’s how: You can visit our “About” or “Become A Supporter” Pages and PayPal, or download our Membership Application and complete it with your contact information and send it to us with your financial support. In return, we will keep you up to date on the issues and send you our signature publication “The True American,” which is designed to influence and educate the political world to our cause. We welcome any level of taxable financial support (non-tax deductible).

Bottom of Form

For more information on our membership and Medicare-Advantage-For-All movement, visit our Medicare-Advantage-For-All web site, call us at 1-888-683-3719 or email us at contact@medicare-advantage-for-all.com.