discussion Amazon to enter healthcare via Biden admin scheme to privatize Medicare

July 23, 2022

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Amazon, the $1.25 trillion company founded and led by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, has announced that it is acquiring One Medical, a private equity-backed primary care provider that generates over half of its revenue from Medicare.

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Amazon, which has broad market power, reach, and influence, could use its new platform to advance the cause of Medicare privatization at a much more aggressive pace. The consequences wouldn’t just mean more taxpayer dollars funneled to the mega-corporation, but also Medicare recipients facing a health care system with ever more resources being allocated to profit instead of care.

The deal must go through normal regulatory approval processes. Advocates have pledged to oppose it.

“Amazon has no business being a major player in the health care space, and regulators should block this $4 billion deal to ensure it does not become one,” said Krista Brown, a senior policy analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project, which advocates on antitrust issues, in a statement

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As The Lever reported in April, President Joe Biden’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has expanded a Medicare privatization scheme launched under former President Donald Trump. That program, which is currently referred to as ACO REACH, involuntarily assigns Medicare patients to private health plans operated by for-profit companies, like One Medical subsidiary Iora Health.

Medicare provides set payments to provide care for these patients, much like insurance. This arrangement incentivizes Iora and other privatization entities to limit the amount of care that seniors receive.

Continued expansion of Medicare privatization seems integral to One Medical’s business model.

July 23, 2022

We are really straying as far from M4A being a reality, because of this deranged, corrupt and incompetent segregationist. Now we are stuck having relitigate rights from 50 years ago. Sucking the air of out any actual progress in this country. While corporations are given billions, and billions to continue to destroy the planet, and squeeze every bit of productivity from the labor force. All “moderates” are contributing to the end of the USA experiment on the world.