The article shows Dr Oz support for the Medicare Advantage model for providing healthcare.
Oz has already proposed a vision for Medicare that would increase private-sector involvement.
Oz has long been a staunch supporter of Medicare Advantage plans. In a 2020 Forbes article he co-authored, Oz said that Medicare Advantage enrollees get superior care thanks to competing plans. As the article stated, Medicare Advantage offers “much better benefits, care coordination, quality controls, levels of performance accountability and cash-flow models for implementing and delivering continuously improving models of care.”
The article went further, though, proposing a new “Medicare Advantage for All” program that would provide coverage to every American who is not eligible for Medicaid.
Oz proposed funding such a program with “an affordable 20% payroll tax” to be split evenly among employees and their employers, similar to how Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes are paid today.
However Dr Oz seems intent on pursuing/investigating fraud and theft done by Medicare Advantage Insurers.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/medicare-advantage-crisis-deepens-as-dr-oz-launches-aggressive-audits-3485aaa9
The latest blow comes from Mehmet Oz, the physician and former TV personality turned MGA Republican who now runs Medicare on behalf of the Trump administration. This week he announced a dramatically expanded plan to investigate the private health-insurance companies that run the program, auditing their invoices going back years.*
Oz clearly seems to think there’s something there. So much so that he’s breaking with standard MGA protocol, which is to fire everyone you can (and many you can’t), and is instead hiring 2,000 more staff — within the next three months — to investigate all the bills.*
Oz cited federal data suggesting that the private insurers could be pocketing as much as an extra $40 billion a year by overbilling the federal government for health services through the program.
The above is a welcome development.
I suppose the Dr Oz plan is to make Medicare Advantage insurers “toe the mark” while pushing for expansion of the program.
I disagree.
I chose the traditional Medicare over Medicare Advantage due to access to more doctors, no need for referrals, and frankly I just do not trust a private for profit insurer involvement with my healthcare.
By removing private Insurers, our nation benefits from the lack of conflict of profits trumping provision of healthcare.