Dr. Oz at ServiceNation in 2008. Photo by David Berkowitz via CC 2.0

Private “Medicare Advantage” plans are killing seniors and bankrupting hospitals. Drop Site News just exposed a scheme by the Trump administration to make them mandatory, ending Medicare as we know it.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Trump’s nominee to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has long been financially and ideologically committed to the takeover of traditional Medicare by insurers like UnitedHealth, which have made an algorithmic science of denying and delaying care in order to maximize profits.

Private insurers already receive just over half of Medicare’s $840 billion budget; with Oz’s confirmation in sight, they are now eying up the rest. The first step, announced in the conservative policy blueprint Project 2025, is to make Medicare Advantage “the default enrollment” for newly eligible seniors, with the long term goal being the ruination and displacement of traditional Medicare entirely. Once accomplished, the big insurers control a system Oz calls “Medicare Advantage for All.”

Medicare Advantage was sold as a way to reduce costs and reduce small-ball corruption, but has resulted in higher costs and more systemic and destructive forms of corruption.

“We thought the hospitals and doctors were driving everything so that we could line our pockets, right?” said Robin Rau, CEO of Miller County Hospital, a 25-bed hospital in southwest Georgia, told Drop Site News. “We took all the control away from doctors and hospitals, and put it into Fortune 500 companies who are increasing their bottom line by denying critical care to patients.”

The best way to stop Dr. Oz’s scheme is to shine a light on it. Take action today to expose Dr. Oz’s Medicare Privatization scheme!