This front page article on Medicare Advantage insurers scaring and scamming the elderly and then billing Medicare for nice profits certainly caught my attention this morning. I am in the age bracket to be getting their calls any minute. I’ve got my dis-list at the ready…

Here’s a good setup from Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly and a link to the Times article.

As part of the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, Republicans expanded the Medicare+Choice program into something called Medicare Advantage. This was all part of an effort to get the free market involved in Medicare, but since it turned out the free market wasn’t very interested, Republicans did what they usually do in such circumstances: they turned on the corporate welfare spigot. In this case, it took the form of bribing insurance companies to participate by paying them more for the same services than Medicare pays directly to doctors under traditional Medicare. The New York Times reports: