Why would the government introduce an intermediary in the first place?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_Budget_Act_of_1997
> The act had a five-year savings goal and a ten-year savings goal following its enactment in 1997. The five-year savings goal was $116.4 billion which would be achieved by limiting growth rates in payments to hospitals and physicians under fee-for-service arrangements.[7]
>This plan also involved the change of the methods of payment made to rehabilitation hospitals, home health agencies, skilled nursing facilities, and outpatient service agencies as well as the reduction of payments to Medicare managed care plans and the slowing of growth rates of these same care plans.[7]
>The ten-year savings goal was $393.8 billion using the same savings methods as the five-year goal to achieve the savings in 2007.[7]
What possible benefit to the patient is having a whole bureaucracy sit between the gov't insurance and the person in need of medical care? It only exists to make money off the backs of the people they are harming.
Now, if you don't know why people sign up for them, you don't understand what they are doing. My mom, like many others, was on a fixed income. If you sign up for a medicare advantage plan, they will do things like give you an extra $100 a month to you directly. Why would insurance be willing to PAY you? Because they make all their money billing medicare and denying you coverage.
18 billion in profits last year running a middle man between patients and medicare