Finding a privatization of Medicare, Medicaid oversight

To the editor:

In recent weeks, two outlets have published almost identical articles about the enormous profits Maximus Corp., has earned by removing people from Medicaid.

The Lever story by Matthew Cunningham-Cook reports that Maximus is one of the biggest players in privatizing essential government services previously done by civil servants. Last September, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services gave a $6.6 billion contract to Maximus to determine who is eligible for Medicaid and who isn’t.

More than 17 million may lose their health insurance, and so far, most of them were removed for administrative reasons, not because they are ineligible due to their income or assets.

Jacobin reports Maximus “has accordingly boosted its earnings estimate by $100 million. Maximus’s share price is closing on its all-time high, up nearly 50 percent since October.“

Both articles note that the contract privatizes a government function. The privatization of government functions is not fiscally prudent or efficient.

My concern as a citizen and a taxpayer is that the function being privatized is the function oversight which may be the most important function of government. I am also concerned by the amount of money it costs, and by the fact that it isn’t being done well, but in a way that hurts far too many people.

But I am much more concerned by the abdication of responsibility for a critical government function.

Helen Krim