Medicare Advantage is a siphon from Medicare funds to corporate shareholders under the guise of for profit efficiency.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/business/dealbook/unitedh...
Also, here's a longer read about the same topic. The fraud wasn't limited to a single insurer, but some have been more blatant than others.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/04/the-personal-t...
The seemingly inevitable part-privatization we're now facing for Social Security and Medicare is nothing more than the wealthy looting the public purse.
This is patently untrue. The entity that paid for my 2yr college was a public-private partnership. It was administered by the Dept of Labor. The private end was a mix of businesses and philanthropy that wanted to better align education and careers.
Funding was predicated on students completing degrees and a period of related employment. It was tremendously successful. It was also immediately axed when the 'Contract with America' took effect.
But my question is: why does college cost anything? Particularly more vocational courses, which 2 year Associate's degrees tend to be.
We have a model for this: the military. You pick a job, they train you to do that job and then you do that job. There is absolutely no reason why education can't be this accessible to everyone.
Public private partnerships at the Federal level have historically just been elaborate grafts to enrich the already wealthy at everyone's expense.
Ever read The Shock Doctrine?
In almost all cases, it's better for the state to build themselves, then lease/rent to private companies, or operate themselves in some cases.
Basically free market is shit at central planning, and the state is shit at offering diversity and finding out preferences.
There are an awful lot of people who are either the wealthy who are exploiting the working class or, way more likely, they think they someday will be:
> “John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Why else would people fight so hard against Jeff Bezos paying slightly more in taxes? Jeff would use you as fertilizer or reactor shielding if it ticked up profits. You are not and will never be Jeff Bezos.
HN just skews to people who aspire to be the exploiters.
We REALLY should have learned our lesson after what happened with the broadband rollout in the early 2000s.