In a response to a request for information from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Public Citizen and several dozen other groups urge the Biden administration to keep profiteering out of health care, stop health care consolidation, and protect patients from corporate greed. Private equity, health insurers and pharmaceutical companies need to be reined in. They call for a universal health care system in the US.
Eagan Kemp, health care policy advocate at Public Citizen, explains that private equity is taking over the US health care system, driving up patient costs and undermining quality of care. Profits come first, second and third. The Biden administration should eliminate the profiteering and ensure our health care system meets patient needs.
Today, our profiteering health care marketplace has driven up costs and left millions of patients without care or paying exorbitant prices for their care, even with insurance. As a result, we spend an average of $13,500 a year per person, often twice as much as every other wealthy country, on health care. No other developed country has so many companies extracting profits from its health care system.
Insurers operating Medicare Advantage plans can compromise patient care in order to maximize profits. They are paid a fixed amount per enrollee upfront. So, they market to the healthy and create obstacles to care—e.g., delay and deny needed care—which lead people with costly conditions to disenroll.
Public Citizen argues that the government needs to standardize coverage in Medicare Advantage so that insurers cannot inappropriately deny needed care. The administration should improve network adequacy requirements. The administration needs to better oversee the Medicare Advantage plans and recoup overpayments. It should not give plans a star rating if they are violating their contractual obligations. And, it should penalize bad actors in meaningful ways.
Here’s more from Just Care:
- Congress focuses on health care mergers and Medicare payments
- CVS profits from manufacturing its own generic drugs
- Corporate health insurers generate sizeable profits covering people with Medicare and Medicaid. Why?
- Private equity profiting wildly on home care at the expense of older adults
- Private equity buying up specialists and driving up health care costs
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