Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Value-based payment has produced little value. It needs a time-out

Kip Sullivan sent this article to me a while back and it was posted. I am starting to see more activity on Value-based-care as an alternative to Fee For Service. The question arises as to how does one measure value received from the care under this regime. It is difficult to measure the value and […]

Piercing the myth: How privatizers got their mitts on Medicare

Piercing the myth: How privatizers got their mitts on Medicare, The Stand, Kip Sullivan Insurance companies decried Medicare’s fee-for-service model. But then Congress let them replace it with something much worse. (May 4, 2023) — Congress enacted Medicare in 1965 as a fee-for-service system because the insurance industry did not want to insure the elderly […]

Little Good can Come from Private Equity in the Healthcare Industry

Little Good can Come from Private Equity in the Healthcare Industry, Angry Bear Two Years ago As if we did not have enough issues with the commercial healthcare insurance industry attempting to supplant single payer Medicare (minus setting hospital budgets, doctor fees, and pharmaceutical costs to the consumer) and the VA with commercial healthcare insurance […]

Testimony of Kip Sullivan, on behalf of Health Care for All Minnesota

I used to think Minnesota was a pretty cool state. Spent some time in the boundary waters between Minnesota and Canada. Great experience for a 15 year old. After reading this, I find Minnesota to be just as backwards as Wisconsin is outside of Madison and Milwaukee. Great place to roam and bad politics. I […]

Privatized Medicaid and MinnesotaCare

Kip Sullivan has been comparing Fee for Service Medicare to Medicare Advantage and Commercial Healthcare Insurance at length calling out the failures of the latter. The results of such comparisons show FFS Medicare is far less costly in providing similar and better healthcare. Expanding Medicare to include all constituents as it is or in a […]

Minnesota’s Sanford-Fairview Hospital merger is a symptom of a larger problem

Sanford-Fairview merger is a symptom of a larger problem, MinnPost, Kip Sullivan. Minnesota has a hospital merger problem. But it didn’t begin last fall when Sanford Health and Fairview Health Services announced their intention to merge. It began in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s in response to mergers of unprecedented size among health […]

Plans to Cut Billions in Medicare Fraud Ignites Lobbying Frenzy

Have Medicare Advantage plans been over coding? According the MedPac 2022 report for year 2020 they have been. The funds of which come out of Medicare funding. The amount of which was an ~$12 billion for 2020 alone. But it is not just 2020, “Medicare Advantage has Overcharged FFS Medicare by Billions for Years,” Angry […]

Medicare Advantage uses Algorithms to block care for Seniors

Kip Sullivan has been writing about the issues with Medicare Advantage. I have joined with Kip in bringing the issues of Medicare Advantage to the forefront. Angry Bear has featured Kip and I have added to the dialogue. This next commentary details how Healthcare Insurance, mostly Medicare Advantage has been using artificial intelligence in the […]

Part 2: Building on the ACO Model

Part Two explores where Medicare should be going forward as determined by doctors Richard Gilfillan and Donald M. Berwick. It is an endorsement of the ACO model with changes to it creating greater efficiency. I am not so sure Kip Sullivan would endorse this approach as opposed to Single Payer. Ultimately Single Payer is less […]

AARP Healthcare Insurance Plan, Just Another Corporate Profit Center?

I am a member of AARP. I am also a part of its MediGap Plan N Program, and Part D Pharmaceutical. Just like to shop at one store. Some do not believe in MediGap. If you are healthy and do not think you will have to pay the Part A $1600(?) deductible and the 20% […]