Dear Editor,
As you may have heard or read, The University of Vermont is now pushing a medicare “advantage” plan in partnership with MVP health care, a local non-profit we are told in direct competition with more affordable traditional medicare plans.
Additionally and to their discredit, rather than promoting what civilized nations around the globe already enjoy —single payer national health insurance where everyone is covered from cradle to grave—they are pushing the scams to defraud the public.
What is most distressing of all is that a true universal health Insurance plan in the United States, a single-payer system as advocated by Physicians for a National Health Plan and advocated by others both in our government and advocacy groups such as Healthcare Now, has been repeatedly shown to be the most cost effective way to cover every single person in the U.S. and an improvement over even traditional medicare as it would cover eye and dental care and yet UVM is silent on the matter. This begs the question: Why?
Unlike traditional medicare, a public program, payed by our tax dollars that go directly to the medicare program which then pays the doctors and hospitals, in medicare “advantage” plans medicare pays the insurance company and no longer pays doctors and hospitals on your behalf. What results is similar to employer style insurance: Unlike traditional Medicare Plans, the “Advantage” Plans can tell you which doctors and hospitals you can and can’t go to and then have a group between you and your medicare. The advantage plans’ mission is to find a way to profit off our sick. They are simply not as good as traditional medicare.
Giovanna Lepore,
Jericho
