The murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson caused the media to highlight sensationalist negative stories about health insurers. One important fact these stories ignore is that older Americans increasingly choose private insurers to manage their Medicare benefits. These plans are called Medicare Advantage, and 54% of Medicare beneficiaries now opt for them.
The Biden administration has been trying to eliminate this choice and force Medicare beneficiaries to use the obsolete Medicare system established in 1965. Traditional Medicare relies on federal bureaucrats to fix prices for medical goods and services and then decide which are approved for beneficiaries. By the 1990s and early 2000s, Congress recognized Medicare had become too complex for federal bureaucrats to manage directly, so it passed laws allowing beneficiaries to choose private health plans to manage their benefits.
