Did you know that Medicare is in grave danger of being quietly handed to Wall Street?
A pilot program called Direct Contracting, an experiment initiated during the Trump administration, allows financial entities such as hedge funds and insurance corporations, to take over the health care management of beneficiaries.
These Medicare recipients chose traditional Medicare and are being moved into a privatized system without their consent.
Traditional Medicare lets you choose your providers, and pays them directly, while Direct Contracting pays a middle-man who frequently restricts your choice of providers and often requires prior approval.
Even more disturbing, Direct Contracting entities receive a set amount of money per patient, and can keep up to 40 percent of that money if it is not used for patient care.
This is our money, paid in through payroll taxes during our working lives for our health care, not profit for a third party.
Groups including Social Security Works, the National Retiree Legislative Network, and Physicians for National Health Program are sounding the alarm.
They demand that we protect Medicare’s integrity, and the best interests of beneficiaries by immediately terminating this pilot program.
Millions of our dollars will go into investors’ pockets instead of our health care if the program is not ended.
This is not a partisan issue.
Concerned citizens of all political persuasions must ask Representative Derek Kilmer and our senators to direct the Biden administration and Secretary of Health Xavier Becerra to end the Direct Contracting pilot experiment immediately.
Hands off our Medicare.
Lisa Dekker
Port Angeles