Medicare Advantage? No Advantage

Ralph welcomes clinical professor and independent health consultant, Dr. Fred Hyde, to give us the lowdown on how the Medicare Advantage program mainly benefits the private insurance companies that participate, not the consumers. Plus Ralph answers more listener questions!

Medicare Advantage? No Advantage

23 thoughts on “Medicare Advantage? No Advantage

  1. The meaning of the name Nader is ‘Rare’. Certainly Ralph Nader is a Rare precious man, a defender of the people.
    Thank you Sir, for your dedicated life for the good of all!

  2. Maybe what people in the US needs to do is get a healthcare race going with Canada. Have a president come up and say they can’t allow Canadians to be better then them in healthcare, and the healthcare gap must be closed and Americans can and will have a better healthcare system then Canada’s and state the metrics that must be used to measure the systems. Then like JFK stated that the US will put a man on the moon within a decade, this president should say something similar about America will have the best healthcare system within a decade and make it about patriotism. As a Canadian, I don’t mind that idea as there is an over flow of anti public healthcare hate that flows into Canada and that is making it harder for Canada to have a better healthcare then we have now…and yes it could be better then it is now. If the US improves their healthcare system and it becomes popular in the US, then Canadian politicians will be able to improve Canada’s.

  3. Disgusting.!
    When Johnson was president the health care insurers would not insure anyone over 60 years of age.
    They loudly claimed.. “We just aren’t going to do it!”
    This was the primary reason why Johnson initiated Med-Care for the elderly.. Now that the government is guaranteeing it, The insurers are all piling on for a cut with “supplementary” health care insurance. These people are crooks. Other than the fact that “Obama Care” is a republican scheme designed to take the entire cost of health care for the poor and place it on the back of the struggling middle class, exempting the wealthy.. This is accomplish by decades of skillful and innocuous legislation that once implemented reveals it’s real purpose.. Fucking people over.

  4. Why aren’t there millions of views of TRNRH each week?! Mr. Nader is rare. An honest, wise and practical human being with a heart for people and planet. There are millions of people on the planet that are alive today due to RN. Talk about courage and truth.

  5. Thank you Mr. Nader for your relentless spirit of humanitarianism. Thank you Dr. Hyde for being a real doctor & mensch.
    Doctors have been “practicing insurance” since the 90s. Real doctors retired — or planned on retiring ASAP — back in the “dawn of managed care” 90s. The crops of doctors since then are more & more like Medical GPS than thinking persons who make decisions. The youngest ones don’t have any idea that doctors didn’t used to “practice insurance” not all that long ago. Across the board, all kinds of history, as well as basic skills (such as the ability write), are being disappeared.

  6. Whats this so called expert keep laughing for? People are dying and suffering and he giggles and laughs. Of well, we wait suffer and die.

  7. Oh come on Ralph, what could be more important on TV then, Comedies, infomercials, sports & of course Talkshows! I mean i really need to know who that Woman’s Baby Daddy is! peace be upon Maury Povich, bc he’s doing God’s work!.

  8. The US healthcare plan is, DON’T GET SICK! I’d like to see more American applying for asylum to other countries with universal healthcare.

  9. Being an outsider, your health system is nuts. It costs twice as much as European healthcare systems and delivers broadly worse health care. Much of the healthcare in Europe is virtually free or has very low insurance costs without excess clauses. Some of these have less tax rates than yours. You appear to obsessed with free market capitalism….yet have a rigged market forced on you. Your corrupt companies are trying to push your dreadful system onto the europeans to ruin theirs. Why not take back control…rig your own healthcare market, make it free for all, call it a national healthcare service and take public donations like you do for your oversized military. FreeJulianAssangeFreePalestine.

  10. I know that the idea of Medicare Advantage is to undermine Medicare. I have nevertheless signed up for Medicare Advantage. Why? Because the program will give me a refund of about 85% of my Medicare Part B premium. In my part of Florida, there are two HMOs that will do that. The refund amounts to about $100/mo that otherwise I should have to pay to Medicare.
    A downside is that the HMOs have a narrow choice of physician. I do not expect to use their physicians because I am a veteran and use the VA hospital for my care. Otherwise, I would pay the Part B and stay with traditional Medicare.
    Another dubious benefit of the Advantage HMO is the free dental examinations, dental X-rays, and cleaning. The problem is that the dentists in the Advantage program are very “ambitious”. In my case, the dentist insisted that he would have to remove a crown to fill a cavity. My own dentist of long standing filled the cavity without removing the crown in twenty minutes. Free examinations through Advantage can be a misleading disadvantage.
    I dislike leaving Medicare, but the savings on my Part B premium will approach $1,200. for 2019.

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