Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Kaiser Permanente plans to freeze executive salaries, cut staff in some areas and take other steps to improve its financial performance in response to major losses in 2008, the San Francisco Business Times reports (Rauber, San Francisco Business Times, 2/20).

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By TRAVIS REED | Associated Press Writer
5:24 PM CST, February 13, 2009
        http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-fl-wellcare-buyingin,0,1773163.story

MIAMI - While Florida politicians were considering a vast overhaul of the state’s troubled Medicaid system, a Tampa company that administered care for half a million poor and needy residents was busy lining their pockets with campaign donations.

WellCare Health Plans Inc., its subsidiaries and executives spent $2.4 million on political contributions in the 2004 and 2006 elections, according to an analysis of campaign records by The Associated Press. More than 95 percent of it went to Republicans, who pushed forward a nationally watched plan that funnels more state and federal Medicaid spending than ever through private companies like WellCare, which profit most by providing the least care.

At the same time, WellCare acknowledges it was cheating Florida out of tens of millions in overpayments and is under investigation for suspected fraud and unfair business practices by a cadre of state and federal agencies.
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Asclepios
Your Weekly Medicare Consumer Advocacy Update

Medicare Advantage Commissions

October 23, 2008 • Volume 8, Issue 43

Recent reports indicate that some of the major national Medicare private health plans are going to pay independent agents $500-plus per year over five years—$2,500 in total—for every new enrollee in their “Medicare Advantage” plans.

The new totals are at least double the top commissions typically paid over the last couple of years—a period when people with Medicare were regularly victimized by predatory agents looking to make a quick buck. Older adults and people with disabilities were bullied or tricked into Medicare private health plans that no longer allowed them to see their doctors or that stuck them with high out-of-pocket costs when they fell ill.

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