Reply #23: Medicare is administered by private corps through

[GinaMaria]

government contracts. That means any reports of unethical behavior brings the Feds (IRS, OIG etc). They descend on the company and will recover any losses. The government dictates the terms and goes with the lowest cost bidder. For some insurance companies there is no profit in administering Medicare contracts, they do this as a way to build a trusted relationship with the government for future opportunities. There are no bonuses for employees working on a gov contract like this. It's not surprising that they would contract out the work to companies that have the infrastructure to manage claims processing and administration including call centers. What is surprising is that it is not a uniform program like Medicare. The ones to watch in this scenario are not the usual suspects, but the ones you might not see coming, like the financial institutions. Their ability to manage electronic transactions makes them contenders in this. We could potentially have the public option health care run by both the insurance industry and the banking industry. Imagine calling with a claim question and the service center is in India.

This would have been simpler if it was an expanded Medicare program where anyone who wanted the public option could opt in. My guess is that it would be greater than 5% of the population who would opt in. There was no reason for this to get so twisted and complicated. This is the result of too many people trying to influence the outcome. What we have here is Monkey fucking a football. It's not what anyone wanted, it doesn't serve a useful purpose and it makes no sense.