About 40 percent of COVID-related deaths were preventable if we had a national publicly funded health care system, concluded the commission convened by the Lancet, a prestigious medical journal, last July. The salutary effect of having equitable and comprehensive coverage on the pandemic outcomes is predicated on survival of Medicare, the insurance program created for seniors and the disabled in America.
Medicare as we know it and as was originally structured by President Johnson in 1965 is rapidly becoming extinct at the hands of “the privatizers” who for long have striven and finagled to get their hands on the Medicare Trust Fund, valued at $277 billion in 2020. Successive administrations since 1980 have welcomed the “profiteering entrepreneurs” of Wall Street, intoning the mantra of “private-sector efficiency” and invoking “free-market” magic to accomplish cost and quality optimization of health care delivery to the vulnerable sections of our society that Medicare was designed for. About half (30 million out of 62 million total enrollees) are currently in the private plans funded by the taxpayers.
The most egregious act of “opening the gate wider” for the crew to wreck the vastly popular service, besides the Medicare Advantage Plan introduced under President Clinton in 1997, is the recent rollout of the Direct Contracting Entity scheme crafted under President Trump. The Biden administration had begun implementing it until stopped by fierce opposition from various advocacy groups including Physicians for a National Heath Program within the last fortnight.
Rejoice not. The retreat is merely tactical. Vigorous efforts at rebranding it as Accountable Care Organization (ACO)-REACH, disingenuously suggestive of benefiting the underprivileged, are under way behind the scenes at the Center For Medicare and Medicaid Services. The wolves (titans of private equity, venture capitalists, investors in the health care industry and other profit-hungry money managers) clothed as sheep keep going unhindered with the marauding mission to systematically dismantle our one major surviving legacy social program from LBJ’s Great Society initiatives.
If not halted now, there will be no foundation left upon which to build an “improved Medicare for all,” providing universal coverage for all Americans, in any time frame, medium- or long-term.
Chase them away we must, in defense of traditional public Medicare, howling: “No Pasara’n” — You shall not pass.
