The recently announced and much ballyhooed Medicare "provider" data dump provides such a small and skewed view of annual Medicare spending as to be worse than useless. It is small because providers only account for about 10% of the Medicare spend. (The providers' portion of the public Part C Medicare Advantage health plan capitation fee is presumably about the same -- but perhaps a little higher. We don't know because Obama never tells us. And my Powerpoint does not reflect that because I didn't feel like playing with Excel any more.)
The dumpy Obama dump covers just partial Part B Trust Fund disbursements and just disbursements made by "Original Medicare" insurance companies, noted as "FFS Provider," "FFS Lab" and "FFS Transport" in the left and top of the pie chart in the image above. (Original Medicare insurance companies include insurers such as Wellpoint and Noridian and are also called Medicare Administrative Contractors.)
Continue reading "April 2014 Obama-Administration Medicare Part B Data Dump Is A Dump" »