How we roll in America
Some people assumed that adding a profit margin into medicare financing must reduce cost because the private sector is awesome and government sucks.
So, to restrain the burgeoning cost of medicare, we set up a system of medicare via private insurance and call it medicare advantage.
It turns out that medicare is very efficient and the privatized approach does not reduce costs. Private insurers cannot offer a competing product at the cost of medicare. There is no money to be made competing against medicare.
So we start paying the insurers more and more to offer private medicare coverage... as if for-profit involvement in medicare is a vital national priority even if it costs us more.
That is just how we roll. Yes, we actually do things like having the government subsidize the private sector so the private sector can appear to be competitive with the government.
So then we (Obama et al) put a stop to this silliness and the Republican candidate insists that we must resume paying money to for-profit enterprises for no reason other than enriching the rich and paying to maintain the illusion that privatization works.