> On the other hand, patient satisfaction correlates with increased rates of hospitalization, higher expenses, and increased mortality. You'd want to dig a little deeper than patient satisfaction before drawing any conclusions regarding medicare vs. medicare advantage, I would think.
I didn't in my previous comment, because we were talking about the overall public perception, which may or may not be connected to the tangible metrics that we actually want a healthcare system to focus on.
As it turns out, though, Medicare Advantage also consistently outperforms Original Medicare on medical outcomes, and it comes in under-budget for identical coverage. Medicaid options vary much more (and they're different in every state, because Medicaid is administered at the state level), but the equivalent private plans for Medicaid coverage also typically perform much better than the public ones.
Hacker News readers aren't generally in the demographic for Medicare[0], but for anyone who is: there's really no reason to use Original Medicare. Every jurisdiction should have Medicare Advantage plans that cost you the same amount as Original Medicare does, and your experience (and overall care) will be vastly improved.
[0] people over the age of 65, or people of any age who are on dialysis for more than two years, etc.
> Medicaid options vary much more (and they're different in every state, because Medicaid is administered at the state level), but the equivalent private plans for Medicaid coverage also typically perform much better than the public ones.
I'd be interested to see these findings. Do you have links?
As far as Medicare Advantage is concerned, it's not the least bit surprising that patient satisfaction is higher. But I wouldn't go treating that as some kind of referendum on Government-run healthcare:
"Many private [Medicare] plans require no additional monthly premiums, yet the government pays an average of $849.90 in monthly subsidies to insurance companies for a person on Medicare Advantage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. That is about 14 percent more than the government spends on people with standard Medicare, according to the nonpartisan Medicare Payment Advisory Commission."
MA was supposed to demonstrate that private insurers could deliver care at lower costs than Medicare, and it hasn't done that. Basically, for every $1.00 the gov spends on a medicare patient, it pays $1.14 in subsidies for an MA patient, with the evidence indicating a lot of that goes straight into the pockets of insurers as profit [2]
> Many private [Medicare] plans require no additional monthly premiums, yet the government pays an average of $849.90 in monthly subsidies to insurance companies for a person on Medicare Advantage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation
That might be a reasonable comparison if Medicare's claims rates were self-sustaining, but they're not. As I explained in another comment on this thread, private insurers subsidize Original Medicare with their own payouts in claims, and that comes out a few orders of magnitude larger than 14% per Original Medicare patient.
I didn't in my previous comment, because we were talking about the overall public perception, which may or may not be connected to the tangible metrics that we actually want a healthcare system to focus on.
As it turns out, though, Medicare Advantage also consistently outperforms Original Medicare on medical outcomes, and it comes in under-budget for identical coverage. Medicaid options vary much more (and they're different in every state, because Medicaid is administered at the state level), but the equivalent private plans for Medicaid coverage also typically perform much better than the public ones.
Hacker News readers aren't generally in the demographic for Medicare[0], but for anyone who is: there's really no reason to use Original Medicare. Every jurisdiction should have Medicare Advantage plans that cost you the same amount as Original Medicare does, and your experience (and overall care) will be vastly improved.
[0] people over the age of 65, or people of any age who are on dialysis for more than two years, etc.