The promise was simple: better care at lower costs. The reality has been a disaster.
Medicare Advantage, the privately-administered alternative to Traditional Medicare, is failing patients, strangling providers, and bleeding billions from America’s health care system—all while insurance executives pocket record profits.
Anti-establishment progressive Democrat Lisa McCormick pulls no punches in her assessment: “Medicare Advantage is like a flat spare tire—it might look appealing until you actually need it, and then you’re stranded.”
She warns that seniors are trading away life-saving coverage for trivial perks.
“It’s not worth giving up unlimited cancer treatment for a gym membership or an annual eye exam,” McCormick said. “Traditional Medicare might not cover hearing, vision or dental—though it should—but none of that matters when you’re fighting for your life and your insurer denies the care your doctor says you need.”
A bipartisan group of senators found that greed is fueling deceptive marketing practices in the Medicare Advantage market, but McCormick said they did nothing about it.
In 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) received nearly 40,000 complaints from beneficiaries about the marketing of Medicare Advantage plans, a significant increase from the approximately 5,700 complaints in 2017.
In 2023, they received over 11,406 complaints making allegations of intentionally misrepresenting their performance, engaging in fraudulent practices, or harming beneficiaries and the program’s integrity.
The problems run deep. Patients who sign up for Medicare Advantage are often trapped in narrow networks, forced to navigate a maze of prior authorizations, and routinely denied critical treatments.
These delays aren’t just bureaucratic—they can be deadly.
A study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that cancer patients in Medicare Advantage were twice as likely to die after pancreatic surgery compared to those in Traditional Medicare.
The insurers’ tactics are ruthless. They lure seniors with glossy ads promising dental and vision benefits, but those perks are often hollow—limited in scope and woefully inadequate for those who need real care. Meanwhile, when serious illness strikes, patients face crushing out-of-pocket costs.
A staggering 7.3 million Medicare Advantage enrollees are underinsured, struggling to afford the care they were promised.
When they try to escape back to Traditional Medicare? In most states, they’re blocked—denied access to supplemental Medigap coverage, leaving them trapped in a system designed to maximize profits, not health.
Doctors and nurses are just as fed up. They waste 11 to 20 million hours per year battling prior authorization denials—time that should be spent treating patients.
Hospitals and clinics face delayed or outright refused payments, pushing already strained health systems to the brink.
The numbers don’t lie:
- 11.7 million seniors are stuck in plans that exclude more than 70% of local doctors.
- 36 independent studies have documented worse outcomes in Medicare Advantage.
- The program costs taxpayers tens of billions more than traditional Medicare, with nothing to show for it but corporate profiteering.
“Medicare was meant to serve the people, not Wall Street,” McCormick said. “We need to end this scam, rein in the insurers, and guarantee real Medicare for All—where care comes first, not profits.”
The choice is clear: America can either keep letting private insurers gamble with seniors’ lives, or it can return to a system that puts patients—not shareholders—first. The time to act is now.