Event by Kentuckians for Single Payer Healthcare
Join our protest at the Humana Bldg
500 W. Main St, Louisville, KY 40202
Save Medicare from Wall Street–Stop the DCEs
Saturday, December 11, 2021, at 11:00 am EST
There must be a public outcry or we will lose Medicare.
Under a Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) program now underway, more than 30 million seniors and disabled who chose traditional Medicare could be placed into largely investor-owned Direct Contracting Entities (DCEs) without the beneficiaries’ understanding or consent. We must not allow hedge fund managers to oversee our health care.
We will hold our protest in front of Humana headquarters because Humana has been identified as a DCE.
DCEs are yet another scheme to privatize Medicare. Like Medicare Advantage plans sold by the big insurers, the DCE program threatens traditional Medicare, and is designed to thwart the system our nation desperately needs–a publicly funded, improved Medicare for All. Everybody in; nobody out!
Tell Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra to put a stop to DCEs. Call 1-877-696-6775.
Also call your member of Congress urging a hearing on this topic. House 202-225-3121; Senate 202-224-3121. Learn more about DCEs at www.nationalsinglepayer.com
Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care www.kyhealthcare.org (502) 636-1551
Protest Sat., Dec. 11, 2021, 11 am at Humana: How the Grinch Stole Medicare
Wall St. and Insurance Companies are stealing Medicare–End Direct Contracting
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, December 1, 2021
Contact: Kay Tillow 502 636 1551, Chair, Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care, www.kyhealthcare.org, nursenpo@aol.com, http://kyhealthcare.org/news/kentucky
On Saturday, December 11 at 11:00 a.m. EST, Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care and others will gather outside the headquarters of Humana, 500 W. Main St., Louisville, KY 40202 where they will demand an end to Medicare Direct Contracting, a program that could fully privatize Traditional fee-for-service Medicare without a vote by Congress.
The protest with include Jill Harmer and the Single Payer Singers, Stephen Bartlett and his band, Steven Katz in full costume as the Grinch, and the reading of the Grinch poem from National Single Payer about the stealing of Medicare..
Humana is one of 53 for-profit Direct Contracting Entities (DCEs) into which seniors who have chosen traditional Medicare can be placed without their consent.
Instead of paying doctors and hospitals directly for care, Medicare gives DCEs a monthly capitation payment to cover a defined portion of each seniors’ medical expenses, allowing DCEs to keep as profit and overhead (up to 40% of revenues) what they don’t pay for in medical services — establishing a dangerous incentive for DCEs to restrict seniors’ care.
Virtually any type of company can apply to be a DCE, including commercial insurers, venture capital investors, and for-profit dialysis chains. Applicants are approved by CMS without oversight from Congress. The DC “pilot phase” includes 53 DCEs in 38 states, potentially covering 30 million Traditional Medicare beneficiaries.
The DCE program places profit-making middlemen between seniors and their physicians and will totally privatize and destroy Medicare unless the public raises a powerful outcry to stop it. Kentuckians for Single Payer Healthcare advocates for a not-for-profit, improved Medicare for All, a national single payer system that includes everyone and removes all barriers to care.
More information on Medicare Direct Contracting:
- Direct Contracting one-page fact sheet
- Direct Contracting policy primer (4 pages)
- Form sent to seniors in Indiana University Hospital System requesting voluntary alignment to a DCE
- Article about Direct Contracting in Health Affairs journal by former CMS Administrator Dr. Don Berwick and former CMS Innovation Center director Dr. Rick Gilfillan: PART ONE and PART TWO
- List of current DCEs
- CONTRACT between CMS and Direct Contracting Entities
- Direct Contracting Entities’ Financial Operating GUIDE from CMS