NPR reports that over the past 3 years, Medicare has been overcharged an excess of $30 billion by different health insurers, and recuperating the money is a slow and difficult process. Medicare Advantage plans are the cause of this crisis. 

Sen. Michael Bennet is one of the Democratic Party’s chief mouthpieces for private insurance, promoting “Medicare X,” a plan that maintains private health insurance as its centerpiece. As a major recipient of money from insurance, PhARMA, hospitals and other segments of the medical industrial complex, Bennet adopts many of industry’s talking points, as former insurance executive and whistle blower Wendell Potter describes in this February 11, 2019 article that will continue to resonate into the coming year and months of presidential campaigning.

Phil Galewitz, from KHN Kaiser Health News, examines why an increasing number of businesses support universal health care.  The rising costs in our current system is certainly one of the reasons.   He interviewed several people, including Richard Master who stated  “Insurance companies are not watching the store and don’t have incentives to hold down costs in the current system.”